Legend of Composite: Demon Administrator
by SabaraOne
Summary: Composite travels to the site of a legendary but niche magazine column. Strong language and indirect violence.
1. 2016-1 (1996-02) Prologue

**MAJOR EDIT: I got overconfident in my abilities and didn't proofread. I'll not be making that mistake again. I also fixed the travesty that FF .net caused to the early sections of the story.  
**

A security camera view. A timestamp reading 16:23:19 Jun 20 2016 in the bottom right. The camera is very high quality. It shows a view of a large room with a computer terminal in the center. The camera is a 90 degree unit which makes objects appear taller and thinner than they really are. The walls are decorated in a Minecraft-esque style. A large view port decorated like Tinker's Construct Clear Glass in one wall shows a view of the lunar surface. Closer examination reveals that the view port is, in fact, a large flat panel display. Most of the rest is painted in a Cobblestone pattern. Iron Doors with blacked out windows are in two walls with Signs above them with labels such as "Plant Room 1: Emergency Power and Provision Generation" and "Cryogenic Sleeper Chamber." The fourth wall has no decoration. It is plain, solid concrete. A large gray steel door is embedded in this wall. A sign above it reads "Warning: Airlock to Main Fission Power."

A musical chiming sound is heard from one door. A feminine voice announces "Sequence complete. Arrival confirmed." A few seconds later the door opens with a loud squeak, briefly revealing a Star Trek like transporter room with four pads. A male Mobian hedgehog with upward pointing quills, deep red fur and an orange face walks in. He wears a black T-shirt reading "I don't often test my code, but when I do, I do it in Production." and comfortable cargo shorts. Behind him are three tails, one a normal hedgehog tail and two being a pair of cybernetic fox tails. They are metallic gray with no aesthetic modifications. The camera view moves to a thumbnail in the bottom right. A tooltip appears above it for a few seconds reading "Tap to enlarge." The main display is filled with a view from the same camera, this time cropped to show the Mobian in a normal field of view. Data scrolls past

 **Visual Scan Commencing… 25%… 50%… 100%… Done**

 **Checking local identification database… Done. 1 match  
Identification: Sabara  
Species: Mobian hedgehog  
Verifying secondary ID…**

The image freezes. Rectangles appear over the tail tips, rapidly shrinking over about a second to enclose just the tips of each tail. They flash red and white. Unintelligible symbols flash next to each box After a second, both boxes go solid green and disappear.

 **Verification Complete**

"Welcome Sabara," announces the feminine voice. The image resumes moving. The hedgehog walks to the chair in front of the terminal and sits down, sliding his tails through a hole in the back. A series of boot logs appear, rapidly scrolling before a login prompt appears

 **Login: sabara  
Password:  
Welcome. Last login 39?93 Jun 19 2016 from 59. 68. 896. 579  
You have mail  
sabara zero:~$ mutt**

The console is replaced with a program displaying several emails. The hedgehog's cybernetic tails stop their normal circular pattern and stick straight out in alarm. He murmurs something that sounds like "How… impossible! How did they..." The top message subject reads

 **ada .hopper QVAR.4982.59:diegeekdie .co** **.uk Subject: An offer you cannot refuse**

The hedgehog opens the message. The text reads

 **From: Ada Hopper [** **ada .hopper QVAR.4982.59:diegeekdie .co** **.uk** **]**

 **To: [large black box]**

 **Subject: An offer you cannot refuse**

 **Sabara,**

 **It has come to our attention that you are chronicling our adventures. You believed we were a fictional character. What you were not aware of was that by the act of writing our story you were unconsciously writing down the events of alternate dimensions, like any fiction writer. With the right equipment the subject of a story can open a Link to the writer's world for communication or transport. There is a text file attached to this email. Publish it, and any subsequent files to your hosting site under the tile of Demon Administrator. If you do this, we will not bother you in any other way and you may continue writing our other stories at your leisure. Do not edit the file with the exception of adding your starting and ending notices. Do not refuse to upload. You will have two days from the receipt of the message to post. We can tell if you do not upload, and we can tell when you open the message, overriding your read receipt setting. If you do not post the file** _ **as is**_ **within 48 hours of viewing… Well, you can guess.**

 **Post now:**

 **Composite**

 **ATTACHMENT: 1. Prologue .odt**

"How could they have found us? How are they real?" Sabara sits back in his chair, almost trembling with fear and awe. He logs into Fanfiction .net and loads the odt file.

* * *

 **ATTACHMENT 1: Prologue .odt**

We were simply flying around, hauling some… uh… perfectly legit commodities around the galaxy. Camanion came online and we started talking.

"Hey Composite, there's a magazine web series you might be interested in."

"What's it called?" we asked

"Uh… Much as I don't like to curse, Bastard Operator from Hell. It's a series of magazine columns about a fictional network operator. It's been running for 21 years now, 25 if you count the original Usenet posts before the magazine _Datamation_ picked it up. In 2000, it moved to a UK magazine _The Register._ It has become the icon of what network and system administrators, including myself, _would_ do if we could get away with it. I'm sending you a couple links to the older pre and post 2000 content. You should be able to scan it and create a Link."

We received the web link and spent the next ten minutes reading. The stories were fascinating. We could see why Camanion and Risa liked them. We opened the scanning algorithms Camanion had sent us and began to analyze the tunneling signatures. The Link was quickly established. We continued with our smuggling run and offloaded our cargo. A very high return, something in the neighborhood of 500k in a Cobra.

We entered the station and found a quiet corner, having previously activated our Ada morph before leaving our ship. _A supply closet, Why not?_ We entered, removed our old Link to Awakening, and made a new one to the current station. We still had plenty of pages, and we could create multiple Links to a single dimension in our Nexus, though inter-age linking was still impossible for now, but no point in taking up extra space. We then selected a new morph from our Copied section. Yeesha. We transformed into the familiar form of Yeesha, an almost-human woman with less defined cheekbones and thinner lips and nose like a D'ni. We were now wearing the common D'ni clothes that were halfway between a cloak and a robe.

We focused on the dimension we wanted to travel to and pushed into the Link.

* * *

 **Time cut: One week ago in a different dimension**

So me and my Pimply Faced Youth assistant have been randomly selected for a supervisor appraisal scheme, much to our surprise. And especially to the Boss's surprise because he distinctly remembers having our names removed from the list.

"Random" is such a misleading word.

I'll have to deal with him later. If he knows we'll give him a negative review out of hand he knows too much. But that's not for another few days.

So me, the PFY, and the Boss go to one of the executive's wastes of space, I mean meeting rooms, on the fourth floor to talk with a Mr. Gray (by name and nature) from an external consultancy company.

"So," Gray starts, "You are aware of the purpose of thismeeting?"

"Yes," I respond, "This is the meeting where you discover that my Boss has all the technical skill of a brick."

The Boss is starting to look uncomfortable.

"Well, he must have some skill to get his position, right?" Mr. Gray asks.

"Or be related to the CEO or the CEO's wife, or plays golf at the same club, or knows what a golf club looks like..." I say.

"Or be an Inland Revenue spook trying to see exactly how deep the tax evasion is in this company," the PFY adds.

"So you have a low opinion of your boss?" Gray asks.

"Yes. In all honesty he couldn't examine a litter and find a runt, let alone manage a network. When I suggested we _not_ jump on board the Internet of Things bandwagon yet he asked if I meant those new websites with pictures in the main window instead of having to open a separate window like back in the '80s. When the PFY suggested we stick with CAT-6 cabling instead of upgrading to shielded CAT-7 because we don't need the shielding outside the production lines he asked what breed of cat we were talking about."

"So what do you envision in a supervisor?" Gray asks.

"Someone who can read and write without sticking his tongue out. Someone who can use a calculator instead of constantly asking us what four plus eight is. Someone who has the sense to sign anything I put in front of him no matter how controversial it may seem," I respond.

"Someone who knows that a 64 bit system doesn't have anything to do with the number of parts in the box," the PFY adds.

"So basically a yes-man and nothing more," Gray summarizes.

"Yep!" the PFY and I say at the same time.

"Well I beg to differ on that. You can't expect him to sign anything without thoroughly examining it first. After all, a delay of a few days is unlikely to hurt anyone."

At this we get up and leave. On the way out I hear the Boss warning Mr. Gray not to enter the lifts or any computer-controlled area. I smell a tragic accident in the near future.

A few hours later I'm in the control panel for the rotating doors when a shadow detaches itself from the foyer and makes a run for them. A quick [clickety-click] later and the doors stop with Gray halfway through and the security alarms go off.

A few minutes later me and the PFY wander down to investigate. Security is standing around helplessly (which is perfectly normal.) Mr. Gray is in the doors hopelessly. He knows the score.

"WELL, WE CAN ALWAYS BREAK THE GLASS!" I shout.

"Armour glass, have to put a car through it." says security. "We tried cutting the wires to the locking mechanism, hoping that would turn it off."

"IF IT WAS THAT SIMPLE ANY BURGLAR COULD GET IN! NOW IT'S ON AN INDEPENDENT BATTERY! TAKES 48 HOURS TO DISCHARGE." the PFY comments "taco shellls and cheese slices sound good though."

"What for?" asks security.

"To slide under the door to him," I reply, "I JUST HOPE HE'S BEEN TO THE TOILET RECENTLY. WOULD HATE TO SPEND 48 HOURS IN A GLASS COMPARTMENT WITH FULL EXPOSURE TO THE STREET, NO WATER, AND ONLY MY BRIEFCASE AT MY Convenience.!"

Life can be rough, especially when you're trying not to think about things.

* * *

 **And that's the prologue. I know the stories are about to get a lot shorter, but that's because i'm trying to keep them to the length of the source material, which has an 800 word limit, except sometimes it goes up to 1600. Composite won't be showing up in the next couple episodes though. Ada will be a cameo next time because I'm setting up for them. Ada will appear regularly, and Composite will appear soon. Five episodes at most.**

 **The BOFH series is my favorite humor column. It's my dream job, the one I'll never get. A BOFH in the real wourld would be lucky to get life without parole. And for the record, I've never gottan an email from Composite. That's probably a good thing.**

 **Shoutout this week goes to Simon Travaglia, the BOFH author.**

 **I'm hoping to get two or three per week up. It reallly depends on what happens when school starts up.**

 **Web show probably isn't the best place to put this, but it's going there because it's the closest I have.**

 **So until next time, this is SabaraOne, Logging out!**

 **Now I need to read the latest episode. Apparently the PFY has discovered Pokemon Go, or rather that the Boss had a serious addiction already. I smell a tragic accident coming up.**


	2. 2016-2 (2005-28) Server Room Tourists

**Hello readers, this is SabaraOne online.**

 **So I'm changing my numbering scheme for this story series. Since there won't be many long arcs, I'm not doing Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and so on. I'll set it up somewhat like the source material, where episodes are numbered by year and the number of episodes in the year. I'll also list the episode the given chapter is based on. Note that BOFH does take place in Britan, so expect some British slang.**

 **2016-2 (2005-28) Bloody Server Room Tourists**

* * *

Bloody server room tourists!

Apparently the Beancounters have convinced the Boss to help them with interviewing for a new technical support person after the old one "accidentally" tripped over the power cord of a heavy monitor while carrying the tower unit down the stairs. Not pretty as you may imagine.

Apparently the Beancounter tech had parked in the PFY's space three days in a row. Granted the PFY _does_ take the tube to work and _doesn't_ need a carpark in the first place, but having another vehicle there did make the PFY's lease deal with the bloke in the next building difficult.

So to keep us from raining on his technical parade, the Boss has told us to stay in Mission Control, despite the fact that he has to go through it to get to the server room, which he plans to send each applicant through so as to weed out the ones with less technical ability than him (Infants, the recently ECT-ed, etc.) So Perspective Beancounter Support Person number one walks in.

We all know the real reason the Boss has told us to stay out is so we won't hear the fabrications surrounding his management persona. So we're taking a keen interest in the computer room monitor…

"I can't hear him," the PFY says. "The bloody financials server is running hot and the fans are overloading the mic input."

[clickety]

"How's that?" I ask

"Much better, what did you do, change the fan modulation?"

"Yes. With the shutdown command." I respond [ring] [clatter] "Okay, request lines are closed. What's he saying?"

The PFY unplugs his headphones from the security monitor (which doubles as his after-hours porn browsing machine,) and I get to hear the boss saying _"…And so I installed those two servers recently."_

"!" The PFY exclaims wordlessly, remembering exactly who installed the servers in question last month.

" _And I also ran fiber optic to the entire floor in one weekend. Of course that was a few years ago when I was on the tools."_ The Boss continues.

" _And it looks like you've done a great job,"_ PBSP#1 brownnoses.

"He's got his hand on a tool if he thinks anyone will believe that!" the PFY exclaims.

" _So you're a real all rounder,"_ PBSP#1 bun licks.

I put a cross next to the bloke's name "Don't like him."

The next guy is less of a brownnose and more of an idiot, which is normal for the beancounter support types. The Boss's story has been signifigantly fertilized by the bullshit spread liberally on the first set. He's now responsible for installing two RACKS of machines and running fiber to the entire building. When he was on the tools.

Things are looking up at number three though.

"It's a girl!" the PFY exclaims happily as soon as the Boss has shown her through Mission Control.

"A woman," I correct, PC-ly, making sure my computer got that last part in case I need a bargaining chip in the future. We tune into the Boss's story.

 _"...and so basically I install every machine personally myself."_

 _"Really?"_ PBSP#3 asks with a tinge of disbelief in her voice.

 _"Yeah. Course, I get the Systems guys to do all the donkey work once I'm sure it's up and running properly - otherwise I'd spend all my time in here!"_

 _"Mmm-Hmm."_

 _"And this is one of our networking rack things."_

 _"Krone, patch by exception?"_ she asks.

 _"Mmmmm and over here the fibreoptic which I installed a couple of years back."_

 _"All by yourself?"_ she asks - in the tone of voice which usually precedes a "bullshit" coughing session.

"We may be on to something here," I say, putting a positive mark next to Ada's name on the shortlist we "borrowed" from the Boss's machine last night.

 _"...and this is one of our more recent installations,"_ the Boss chirps, gesturing behind him. _"Tell me, can you guess what we use this server for?"_

 _"Air conditioning?"_ she says dryly.

"I think I love her!" the PFY gasps.

" _So now that's done, how 'bout we nip down to the pub for an informal chat?"_ the Boss asks, slipping into sleaze mode.

"The Bastard!" the PFY snaps.

"Just wait," I say. "This could be the true test of character. Oh look, she's stepping in close, doesn't go for the knee to the groin - damn it - bumps the pen from his hand."

"Why?"

"Just wait. And he bends down to pick it up... and she slips out of the room.."

"Oh," the PFY says disappointedly.

"And slips a wedge under the computer room door..."

"Oooh!" the PFY says happily.

"Before pressing the halon release..."

"WE HAVE A WINNER!" the PFY blurts happily.

A borderline psychotic, loose in beacounter central. So it all worked out for the best then...

* * *

 **And that's that chapter sorted.**

 **And this is why this story is rated M. I'm using the obfuscation rules for curses used in the original episode or the standard for the series,which involves starring out the vowel. For whatever reason bullshit is uncensored despite sh*t being so.**

 **And for the record, no I don't browse explicit websites.**

 **Shoutout this week goes to YouTuber Clementj64. One of my favorite people on YouTube, he's done a lot of Sonic and Mega Man games, as well as a few other projects such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and a few other miscellaneous games.**

 **Hopefully this one will be better in the grammar and spelling department. In my arrogance I didn't proofread the last one. I'll get that fixed soon enough.**

 **So until next time, this is SabaraOne, logging out.**

 **EDIT: Only two spelling mistakes this time, and they were both in the ending comments**


	3. 2016-3 (1996-03)

**So… New chapter time!**

 **I'm uploading three chapters today because I'll be completely off the grid for the next week, so I'm uploading today's and next week's. I'll probably have them done by Tuesday night anyway. And don't worry about me running out of material for this series any time soon. I've got 22** _ **years**_ **of episodes, averaging one every two to three weeks.**

 **This one is only loosely based on the source episode because the source relied pretty heavily on the PFY not knowing about the BOFH's habits. Which Composite/Ada does. The episode borrows heavily from the next episode in the series.**

 **Addendum: I was planning to upload Saturday, but Murphy woke up and noticed things were going a little too well for me and the real world's schedule has plans for me on Saturday, so I'm uploading a day early.**

 **2016-3 (1996-3) The BOFH receives a second PFY**

So I'm walking into Mission Control early – before lunchtime in fact- and notice that the spare desk we use for storage has been taken over by what I immediately recognize as a second PFY. A moment later I realize it's Ada from the interviews last week. I do an about-face and head to the Boss's office, gesturing for _The_ PFY Steven to do the same.

We are told by the Boss, who somehow survived his accident in the server room, and more importantly has not decided to move on to another job after getting out of hospital due to halon exposure, that Ada will probably last longer than me and the PFY combined. We are to train her to our highest confidence. And the pay cut he took as a result of the appraisal two weeks ago has nothing to do with what might appear to the casual eye as a vendetta. Complete coincidence. Naiveté knows no bounds. Of course now we have to deal with the Beancounter Support person, but that's a problem for another day.

When we get back to Mission Control, Ada waves a stack of While-You-Were-Out messages, "I assume you want me to bin – uh, put these in the low profile circular filing cabinet?"

"Potential," the PFY comments.

I notice that Ada has the ultra-legit copy of Photoshop I keep in the drawer marked "Lecture CDs: Richard Stallman, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison" to dissuade opportunity thieves. I tell her that, "While you've got that loaded up, think you could do something about the Beancounter Support guy?"

"Already on it!" Ada says happily, dragging in pictures of the new Support bloke and wandering into the backup tape room to grab one of our old 'athletic training film' archives.

"How does she know so much?" I ask to no one in particular while she's out.

"I knew documenting our exploits for that magazine was a bad idea," the PFY answers.

"Right."

* * *

We let the Boss throw his weight around for a week, promptly ignoring his every royal command while concocting a display to make it look like we did what he asked.

The Monday after the Boss's week in the sun is interrupted by an uproar when an image of the Support bloke is found in an "encounter" with the CEO's wife. He claimed that the image was touched up (which it was, but we weren't about to say this) but consensus was that it wasn't the image getting that treatment. Dirty sod.

It wouldn't be so bad except that some bastard uploaded it to all the machines in his department as a boot screen image. Funny, the loaner camera's erase function was working fine when I "serviced" it the other day. Of course with the application server and the version control program password protected we need someone to put the blame on. The Boss has been here a little too long anyway. He's starting to figure out parts of our operation that nobody should know.

"So, I should change my password, write it down and put it in the Boss's desk, and change it to something new after he's given a box?" Ad asks.

"Or a pair of cuffs," the PFY says, remembering what happened last time someone was caught hitting the CEO's missus.

"That's beside the point," I comment.

After Security respond to the anonymous tip – they know who it is, ut they also know better than to act like it's anything but anonymous – the Boss and the Beancounter are helping themselves to a punch. The security guys are like that if you refuse to leave the building. Ex-army chaps apparently. We look on with barely disguised smiles and sugary doughnuts as they are escorted from the Hallowed Halls of Hell.

"You do know he's the one who got you this job?" the PFY asks Ada.

"Yes, but in your words, 'Yeah, but no point in being sentimental.'"

"Yup, she's staying on the team." The PFY says. Strange. I heard he made a move on her after one lager too many Tuesday night and got locked in a tape safe with a deposit slot and spent his hangover alternately suffocating in the airtight safe and being fed a mixture of air and recycled water. Based on the amount, she must have been storing it up. After that we both abandoned any plans we had concerning her.

I even went ahead and switched her contract in the HR records with one identical to mine and the PFY's, which contains many useful clauses, such as a 104 year penalty payment on termination of contract, absolutely no grounds for reasonable termination, a massive penalty for being forced to work after a UFO sighting, and several others I don't want to mention in case there's a manager reading forbidden literature. Next I gave her access to enough of my blackmail evidence to make her unsackable.

"Now," the PFY says, "To celebrate your first Boss sacking, let's ring one of the of the remote sites and tell them their phone problems are because their EPROMS have expired and they need to be removed in bright light, like direct sunlight."

"Won't that eras- Right!" Ada replies, logging into the PBX switchboard.

You can't PAY for job satisfaction like this!

* * *

 **I can't wait for the next episode. How will Simon the BOFH and Steven the PFY respond to Composite? Only one way to find out. Hopefully I'll get the email soon.**

 **Shoutout this week goes to the Angry Video Game Nerd. This guy has been running on Youtube for ten years, reviewing 'shitty' games the whole time. His works are absolutely hilarious.**

 **And if you ever need me to explain a technical detail in an episode feel free to ask. I won't complain until I'm asked about three times in as many episodes. As you know if you've read Composite's last adventure I love to talk about obscure tech crap that nobody knows about, cares about, or can afford to buy. I'm also more than happy to go on for hours about Google and the NSA, but that's another rant entirely.**

 **So until next time this is SabaraOne, logging out.**


	4. 2016-4 (2008-09)

**Hello readers, this is SabaraOne online for a new chapter.**

 **So, the moment I've been waiting for. Composite reveals themselves.**

 **An update on my numbering system. If I put the name of the chapter in the parenthesis with the source number, it's the original title because I couldn't think of something better.**

 **2016-4 (2008-09) The Big Reveal**

 **POV: Composite**

"You don't have to do this," the PFY tells Simon. The rain lashes against the roof of the building, thunder booms in the distance. We silently wish for a strike on us for a quick energy boost, but we aren't going to draw one in so close to the server room air conditioning units. Or the user's aircon, but that's more than welcome to get hit as far as we're concerned. Simon, the BOFH, stands at the edge of the roof, a copy of _Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green_ in hand.

"Yes I do! It's the only way!" the Bastard cries.

"No it's not, it's not… necessary" the PFY says.

"It IS! I must!" the Bastard insists.

"Let's be reasonable, think about it carefully," the PFY says quietly so Simon has to walk away from the edge of the building to hear.

"I have! It's the only way" the BOFH whimpers.

"No it's not. It doesn't have to be the end." The PFY is calm the whole time.

"It must! I can't go on like this!" the BOFH shouts.

"You just have to be strong."

"I'm not strong! I can't do it!" the BOFH sighs.

"Yes you can," the PFY holds out his hand, "Now, hand over the game disk."

"I CAN'T! You'll just make me play it again! It was bad enough when I didn't know better, but now it's just too horrible to think about!" the BOFH's hand starts to creep out over the edge again.

"Think of the children!" the PFY cries

"What bloody children?"

"A child might find the disk. Pick it up. Play it. They might think it's normal, good even."

"Not even a child would be that stupid!" the BOFH gasps.

"Wait," we say, talking for the first time in the whole exchange, "You're just worried about him dropping the disks? Not about him jumping?" We cross our arms over our chest.

The PFY responds with, "Of course, him jumping would be a bonus."

Some part of the Bastard's professionalism starts to show through, "I'd say the same if our roles were reversed."

"In that case…" we start to glow, reverting from the Ada form we've been in for the last month. At the same time we divert full power to cognition. Time almost seems to slow as our processors kick into an overclocked state. We telekinetically grab Simon, pulling him away from the roof. At the same time we grab the game case and throw it into the air towards us. We then proceed to throw our Disk at the game, slicing it neatly in half at the zenith of its arc. Finally, we grab our PRod out of hammerspace, pop it open and hit Simon with one end to the neck. He crumples to the roof, still breathing, but unconscious.

We equalize power and time returns to normal while the PFY manually closes his mouth, which had dropped open in shock. "I _knew_ there were aliens! So did you crash in Roswell? When did you escape from Area 51? How long until the invasion? Can I expect to keep my job?"

"We'll explain once he wakes up." We say, transforming back into Ada and carrying Simon's limp form back to Mission Control.

* * *

The Bastard woke up In mission control fifteen minutes later. He immediately scrambles backward on his hands and feet, trying to escape the spiked head with the solid red visor.

"What are you?" he asks, "Where's Ada?"

"Steven, could you get us a stool?" we ask the PFY.

"A stool? You have a perfectly good leather gaming chair with full support and automatic posture correction!"

We raise our tail and pivot around, giving him a whack on the chest he won't forget any time soon. He hurriedly leaves to get a stool from the storeroom, adding "Reason for the bruise" to his "Why I should get tanked tonight" list. A minute later he's back. We sit down on the stool, letting our tail hang off the edge and lean back slightly, adopting our sister Camanin's lecture pose.

"So, first, there's two major fictional universes you need to know about. Have you ever heard of Sonic the Hedgehog?"

"Yeah," the PFY says, "My younger cousin used to love the early games on his Genesis. He stopped playing around 2005 or so and never started back up. Except he occasionally plays the Genesis games again."

"Good. And have you ever heard of Tron 2.0?"

Simon pipes up, "Vaguely. It came out in late 2003 or something. I downloaded a pirate version a few months later, but only played for about half an hour."

"Okay. Do you remember anything about Fcon?"

"Yeah, weren't they the evil company cliché?"

"Yes. They also made us. So, we are a cloned symbiont. Two parts. Our templates are a Mobian Single-Tailed Fox named Camanion and her greatest invention, Risa, a sentient 'Turing-Class' artificial intelligence. They are our sisters. In fact, Camanion was the one who told us about you, and the one who gave us the equipment to come here. Well, part of it."

"But how could… It's the US government, isn't it. They wanted to make a device to take over the world, and they needed a front, so they made Fcon and forced Disney to put them in the game. Then they used the Mobians they captured after one of the UFO crashes as a template. It's all becoming clear now…" the PFY says, lurching off on a conspiracy theory, "Wait, what's a Mobian?"

"In the Sonic universe, Mobian is the catch-all term for any of the anthropomorphic animals. In some variants, Sonic's homeworld is called Mobius." We respond, "And our origin is simpler, and yet so much more complex at the same time. We're from another dimension. Actually, we've been to three other dimensions so far, not counting the Ages."

"Ages…" simon muses, "Like in Myst?"

"Got it in one," we commented, "That was the second dimension we were in. The first was Tron 2.0, which is the real timeline as far as we're concerned, were we were created. Fcon used an inter-dimensional link of unknown origin to break into both Camanion's doctors server and her servers. They lifted Camanion's genome and the Turing AI source code, as well as Risa's makefile. Risa's modified Turing code was stored elsewhere. They then used the genome and code to create us. We are a fusion of the two elements. Made up of a life support system in our chest, which you'll never touch since it is completely surrounded by our data shell. Our very existence breaks several laws of physics. Some of the advantages of our symbiont form is that we can enter and exit computers at will, have much stronger telekinesis than Camanion, and are much more well-equipped for combat."

"So how did you get here, or to Myst? What's the third dimension?" the PFY asked.

We clenched our right fist, hard enough that Camanion would probably slice her palm open, and summoned our arm weapon, a shotgun Risa had identified as an HECU SPAS-12 from the game _Half-Life_. "Within three minutes, we blasted our way out of our containment chamber. During those three minutes we got our circuit patterns and our Disk." We gestured down at our body. It was made up of seamless but not form-fitting red armor patterned with dense blue circuit patterns. Our helmet was jet black with cosmetic upward-pointing hedgehog quills with red highlights. We had noticed a similarity with Shadow the Hedgehog while browsing the internet at work between games of Unreal Tournament and the new DOOM game. On our back was a circular solid Disk, colored red with blue circuits like our armor. Strapped to our back were two blades Risa had identified as a pair of katana and Camanion had recognized as belonging to a warriror from a series called Mortal Kombat, Scorpion.

"So what happened next?" the BOFH asked.

"We entered the head scientist Lightfoot's computer. It gave us access to the rest of Fcon's network. We fought several battles against Fcon's ICPs"

"ICPs? What's that?" asked the PFY

"Grunts," said Simon, remembering _something_ from the game.

"Intrusion Countermeasure Programs. We like to call them Incompetent Crap Programs, because they are. We were weak at that point, any competent program could have destroyed us." We intentionally didn't mention our need to listen to music for proper combat rhythms. We wanted to keep something in reserve. "During that time we got our swords and our Airmech." We held out our hand, releasing a stream of red data cubes that formed a flying saucer, which then transformed into a four-legged robot with a helmet shaped head in a swirl of servos before exploding into cubes and returning to us. "we also got our Rod Primitive, learning how to use it both as the cattle prod you saw earlier and as a Light Cycle. We left Fcon's dimension after an encounter with four Seekers, giant worm-like programs that can be programmed for search and retrieve or search and destroy missions. We derezed one with our disk, one with our drone and the last two with a shockwave attack." Technically accurate, but not revealing the nature of the Banshee Wail attack, our most powerful, a combines super and subsonic along with singing that was simmply the stuff of nightmares. "At this point eight more popped from the ground. We used a power called Chaos Control to escape. Somewhere between battles we met Camanion and Risa, who had reverse engineered Fcon's link. They taught us about several of our Mobian and AI powers such as telekinesis and Chaos Control."

"What do they look like?" Simon asked.

We rezed our Ki, a D'ni communication device Yeesha had given us, and used its display to project holograms of Risa and Camanion. Camanion is a bipedal fox with blue fur and a purple muzzle. She wears a "Talk Nerdy to Me" shirt and tennis shoes disguising small jets that allow her to fly without exhausting her psychic power. A single blue tail with a purple tip flicked behind her. Risa is a humanoid AI with red seamless armor, quite like ours without the circuits. She wears no helmet, revealing her piercing blue eyes and long blonde hair that flowed almost to her middle back. She often braids it to keep it out of her way when fighting or working in confined spaces. While she is proficient with nearly any weapon, she relies on external weapons as her own arm cannon is not known for its stability.

"After we escaped, we were transported to _Releeshahn_ , the home of the D'ni people," we pronounced it duh-NEE. "There we met our friends Yeesha, Irras, and many of the other D'ni. After we proved ourself by solving the puzzles of Myst Island, Yeesha taught us The Art of Writing Ages. Our only age is called Awakening. In your dimension, and our sister's dimension it is called Elite: Dangerous. We fly a fully upgraded Cobra Mk III. It's an older model, but it's as good as it gets. We're a smuggler and trader. After a while Camanion told us about your series, which is published as fiction in several dimensions under the BOFH title."

"Just like it is here," the PFY said, "Hey, shouldn't we be calling the suicide rehab people?"

"Oh, getting the sh*t scared out of me cured me of that pretty quick. The destruction of the game didn't hurt either."

"Oh, we did make a copy…" our supervisor started to cringe towards the door, "…But it's not as bad as you claimed, it's worse. Now who's up for a round of Mortal Kombat?""

"What are you? Where's Ada?" the new Boss asks, stumbling into Mission Control

*CRASH*

"Methinks there's been a tragic accident," the PFY comments as a box of lineflow paper falls onto the Boss's head as we transform into Ada.

"I can't have him remembering our true self. And I know I don't have to worry about you either," we say, projecting a few images involving them and the spouses of a few members of senior management from Dr. Bastard's lab.

* * *

 **And on that comment, it's done. Composite has revealed themselves, their identity is safe, and the PFY has his proof of alien existence. Everybody's happy. For any of you who haven't read my first story, I'd recommend you do so. It explains many things about Composite they didn't get to, including their full range of known abilities, not all of which I mentioned.**

 **I'm going to slow my shoutouts to one a week because I spend more time thinking of what to put for a shoutout than I do writing.. Okay, about a third, but still, I need to slow down. I don't want to have to start using authors and developers of games I'm going to write about in the future.**

 **For the record, that was probably the darkest episode of the series. And no, I, unlike the BOFH, don't pirate software.**

 **I'm not sure of the origin of the term PFY, Pimply-Faced-Youth, but it's pretty common in tech fields. Under most circumstances, the title of PFY is based more on experience than age and complexion.**

 **Sorry about my paragraphs running a little long this time.**

 **So, until next time, this is SabaraOne, logging out!**


	5. 2016-5 (2003-12)

**I'm back! Now, after the dark tone of the last episode, here's something much lighter.**

 **Seriously, writing this series is pretty annoying with the titles and somewhat with content. There are two major versions, the web version and the Kindle version. Often they have different names and sometimes they have different numbers. Plus the way they emphasize text is strange. The old pre-2000 web episodes *emphasize* *like* *this*, the post 2000 web episodes** _ **emphasize like this,**_ **and the Kindle editions *emphasize like this*. I'm just glad I don't have the bound editions,just to make things even more confusing.**

 **And when I use the term "biscuit" I mean the British slang for cookie.**

 **2016-5 (2003-12) Ada Hopper and the Bastard School of Argument**

 **POV: Composite**

And so we're bored. This is nothing out of the ordinary, due to the much higher clock rate we run at than wetware programs like humans, but more importantly there's been no work on for a week. This makes our coworkers bored too, ad we all know who makes work for idle hands (apart from Software Assurance.) Okay, almost no work. Our supervisor is out teaching a user how to insert paper into a paper tray for the third time this week. We note that his cattleprod battery isn't in the charger. Pity.

"I think I'm going on an Operations mission," the PFY says.

"And what would that be?" we ask.

"I'm going to pop into the Boss's office and steal all the good stuff from his desk. Put a mop in the room so he blames the cleaners when he gets in. He always checks in at Mission Control before going to his office. Run interference for me?"

"Sure, just grab us some of those biscuits in his bottom drawer."

"Why do you want them?"

"We can get a small amount of energy from them. And more importantly we do have gustatory and olfactory sensors." Noticing his blank stare we clarified, "We can taste them."

Now we just need to think of a way to keep the Boss occupied… BINGO!

Two minutes later…

"You're bloody pirating software!" the Boss cries unhappily as our computer's DVD writer spins up. We could, of course, read disks by looking at them and burn them with the digitizing laser stored in our left arm, but the Boss doesn't need to know that. Nor do our coworkers for that matter.

"No, I'm making a backup copy. All perfectly legit according to the license," we say, using singular pronouns to prevent confusion and suspicion.

"But you said you were going to take it home!"

"Yes, a secure offsite location."

"But both your supervisor and his other assistant got broken into within the last year, I doubt you'd be any better."The fact that we spend our after-hours time in our desktop machine is absolutely beside the point. We're good friends with most of the programs in it, except init, who is too much of a recluse to meet. We like to think of it as a nice neighborhood with nice neighbors.

"Three things. One, make that within the last quarter. Two, they break into each other's houses for fun. And Three, I'm much better at security than they are. Besides, they only do it for bets."

"BETS?"M The Boss asks.

"Yeah, they always think 'I bet I can get away with this,' as opposed to 'I bet my colleague has noticed the wax on my key from my hasty impression and has some nasty plan in mind.'

"But we have an offsite storage facility, I saw the bloke the other day!"the Boss protests, unearthing a lie in the process. Sure the bloke's delivering "backups," but they're movie DVDs disguised as backup disks (read: pirate movies on DVD-R media.)

"But that costs ten quid per unit per year! This costs nothing!"

"So," the Boss changes tack, "Are you going to backup all the software?"

"No, just the stuff that would be hard or expensive to replace, like OS/2"

"Is that valuable?"

"Some would say priceless, I'd have trouble putting a value to the company on it," The value would, of course, be zero. OS/2 isn't worth the energy it takes to burn it, microwave it, smash it, or generally destroy it.

"So why are you making this backup copy?" The Boss asks

"In case of disaster like fire or theft."

"But still, doesn't making a backup copy violate the license?"

"We're allowed to make a backup of the media for just the situations I mentioned earlier."

"But again, you said you were taking them home. Where you'll probably sell it."

"And I'm saying that I'm making a backup copy. And so long as I stick to my story my intentions are presumed to be innocent. Like saying 'Adult entertainment site' or 'Anatomical teaching tool' instead of porn site. Or saying 'unlawful combatants' instead of saying Prisoners of War."

"Riiiight..." the boss says, "Okay, I can understand the risk of fire, but what about theft?"

"Opportunity thieves," we say, "Normally reliable, but can't resist snatching something left unguarded. I red a story on reddit – after hours of course – about a place where one of the cleaners stole a PC that had already been decommissioned, and was simply waiting for pickup by the disposal guys. He was probably planning to sell it until one of his friends spooked him by telling him stories about the cops tracing these things. He was going to return it, but he spooked and dropped it. Security investigated the noise and he spilled his guts quickly. He got fired, but I don't think he got reported to the police because he brought it back." At this point we notice the PFY coming near the back door with so much contraband he had to steal the Boss's wheelie chair to carry it.

"So what are you going to do about theft?" the Boss asks.

"Oh, on second thought I'll probably just chuck the media in the bin. That way nobody will see it and be tempted."

"But what about..."

BUGGER! Hoist on our own petard. Only one thing to do… we motion for the PFY to get us some more biscuits.

Nice biscuits too. Got chocolate in them.

 **And that's the show! Or something like that…**

 **Just to explain, the part where the Boss says "BETS?"M early in the conversation is** _ **very**_ **intentional. That typo was in the web version (and edited out of the Kindle version.) I couldn't resist.**

 **So what did you think?**

 **And at any rate, until next time, this is SabaraOne, logging out.**


	6. 2016-6 (2012-12)

**2016-6 (2012-12 Hasta la Vista… luser)**

 **POV: BOFH**

"But I installed Service Pack 2!" the user whines at the PFY.

"Installing SP2 to Windows Vista is like dousing a burning turd. Best case scenario you have a steaming turd," the PFY responds.

"No, it's like dousing _half_ a burning turd. You've got a partly flaming turd that could catch the rest at any time," Ada corrects. I know her real name and face are different, but that fox-faced helmet doesn't do my sleep any favours so I prefer to forget it.

"And while we're on the subject, why the hell are you running Vista?" I ask.

"It came on the machine!"

"Not from us it didn't," I say.

IF I HAD FIVE QUID FOR EVERY TIME A USER BROUGHT THEIR BLOODY HOME MACHINE FOR US TO FIX I'D HAVE A LOT OF SPARE CASH LYING AROUND!

"So, you want us to fix this personal machine for you?" Ada asks. Even though I have only the most professional if intentions towards her after the PFY's tape safe incident (Though I may have accidentally plugged her chair into a timer that should give it a blast of nice raw mains for a couple minutes) I can't help put notice she has a very nice voice. She almost never raises her voice, she doesn't need to, and it is often hard for me to determine how she's feeling based on voice alone. It makes her more dangerous to the users as well, because they can't hear when she's planning revenge over the phone.

"Yes!" the user responds.

"Can't do it, Health and Safety," The PFY says tursely

GOOD CALL THAT MAN!

"How?"

"Well, if we cleaned up your machine and it ran like the wind, which will never happen because Vista, but anyway, say we did this and in doing so installed a new browser by just selecting the defaults for any program that's prostituted itself to a browser company and added a checkbox to install the browser by default, and say you used this browser to view something that gave you a heart attack, like an attractive camel, then we'd be liable." the PFY answers.

"But I wouldn't persue it, it'd never happen! I'm not interested in _camels!_ " the user cries, confused. Ada gets the far-eyed look she uses when her attention is diverted _elsewhere_ before she refocuses and nods at me. In other words she's got some dirt to tell me and the PFY later.

"What about," I chip in, "if we tidied up your machine - made it as good as we possibly could - which isn't all that good considering you have Vista..."

"It's.. Vista Business."

"Vista BUSINESS!" the PFY gasps. "Oh well, why didn't you say so!?"

"Oh, does that make a difference?"

"Only to the size of the hammer," Ada responds.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing," I say. "Anyway, say we tidied up your Vista BUSINESS machine and ran like the wind - which, let's face it, is never going to happen. But say there was a miracle and somehow it happened. And you took your machine home and let your kids play on it again. And they installed all their peer-to-peer apps which started every time the system did, along with some some cracked games riddled with bots and every time you connected via the VPN our firewall started going bananas. And we'd look into it and find out it was you. And we'd tell you about it and you'd tell us that you'd been meaning to come in because your machine is running slow again."

"Uhhh... Yeah?"

"And if all this happened and we told you that your machine would run a lot faster if you just stopped your kids using it to play games and download porn and you promised us you'd do this, but then you just let your kids use it again.."

"Uhhhh... Yeah?"

"... Like you did last time …"

"Uhhh... Uh-huh," he says nervously

"Say you did all that and then you had a workplace accident which bore all the hallmarks of you having been beaten repeatedly with what might have been an ITIL manual - still in its plastic wrapper (because who reads that crap anyway) - but in actual fact was caused by you slipping when you went to get a page out of the printer. Say all that happened. Would you blame it on us for fixing your machine?"

"Uh… No?"

"Okay then, leave it here and we'll have it back to you by afternoon tea time." I say

* * *

 **The next day…**

[ring]

I see the caller ID and slap the phone onto hands-free.

"Thanks for looking at my machine, it's running a lot faster now, but..."

"...We removed some piece of software that you really need and so you got your kids to install it, but then it ran slow again and so you brought it back into work and plugged it in to our network to see if it's faster here?" I ask, noticing Ada pointing at the FIREWALL section of our 100" OLED display which has all the information a sysadmin could need, including such things as countdown to happy hour and a constantly updated rumor board about the latest games.

"It was just a registry scanner!"

"A registry scanner is like putting a turd in the top drawer of your desk," I say.

"Are you saying registry scanners are bad?"

"No," Ada pipes up from the other side of the room, where she's grabbing a still-wrapped ITIL manual, "We're saying there's a turd in the top drawer of your desk," She sits down at her desktop and loads up the print server monitor, manual in hand.

 **And that's all. I hope you liked it.**

 **Because I know someone's going to ask, ITIL technically doesn't stand for anything anymore, but it used to be an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. It is a set of currently five volumes describing non-organization specific procedures for IT support services. Obviously, the BOFH is a huge fan. Not.**

 **And I can honestly say I never realized just how helpful the iOS 9 multitasking features are. I only upgraded on Saturday because I get home, open up YouTube, and find out that all of a sudden there's a jailbreak out. That's why I was still running 8.4 on my iPad. I'm already loving both iOS 9 and all the features I missed out on from Cydia because the package in question only ran on iOS 9.**

 **Anyway, until next time, this is SabaraOne, logging out!**


	7. 2016-7 (2012-11)

**2016-7 (2012-11) Exceptions Are the Rule**

 **POV: Composite**

"EVERYONE'S AN F**KING EXCEPTION!" the PFY snarls, beating us and the Bastard to the punch by nanoseconds.

"What do you mean?" The Boss asks in the tone used only by card carrying members of naiveté international.

"It's the life of a bloody systems admin!" We cry, "People want us to make exceptions for them. Passwords, Web filters, Extra file space, the list goes on!"

"But it's just some letters," The Boss says reasonably, as if such a term could be used to describe the Boss.

"And that's the tell-tale sign," the Bastard breaks in.

"The tell-tale sign?" asks The Boss.

"Just," we respond, "By saying it you assume it's a reasonable request, just a few clicks and a couple of keystrokes, but it's bloody not!"

"But isn't it just a few clicks and a couple of keystrokes?" The Boss asks.

"Yes it is," we start, "But then he brags about it to his friends. AND THEN THE NEXT F**KWIT WANTS HER COMPLEXITY TURNED DOWN! THAT'S WHEN THE FUN REALLY BEGINS!"We take a second to calm down, "Okay, so if we change the complexity for one bloke it affects the security of the entire domain. Requiring an eight character minimum password keeps them from using their initials twice. Requiring a number keeps them from using plain password. Requiring a letter keeps them from using their phone number. But it's about domain security."

"Can't you just make an exception for this one person?" The boss asks.

"You did it again…" The PFY murmurs.

"Used the J-word," we say before The Boss can stick his foot in it. "Remember, if Just is in a sentence it's an unreasonable request. And we don't make exceptions."

"Why not?"

"BECAUSE EVERYBODY'S AN EXCEPTION!" We say. The Bastard says Our accent is coming along nicely. We almost sound like a native Brit.

"What does that _mean?"_ The Boss asks, confused.

"If I change one guy's password complexity, next thing I kknow some other basket case wants me to do the same." We respond.

"But this is a special case!"

"THEY'RE ALL SPECIAL CASES!" The PFY shouts.

"What do you mean?"

The Bastard steps into the fray, "What my assistants are trying to say is that if we change this special case, there will be another special case, because they're allergic to the number keys. Then the next bloke will be unable to mix upper and lowercase letters on religious grounds. And then the next will have a special needs keyboard that makes it hard to use the Shift key. And the next needs a shorter password because she uses, oh, a blue instead of brown switch keyboard and the clicking annoys her coworkers.. Next thing we know all we can use is A."

"Or Enter," the PFY adds.

We punch in, "and then we get a Beancounter who can't use a flash drive because _reasons,_ and so he needs us to temporarily extend the email size limit so he can send himself some work. And then he needs it again next month, and the next month, and three times the month after that, and then he asks why we can't just leave it at 50 megs."

"Is that so unreasonable?" the Boss asks quietly, noticing the PFY's "insulation Tester" is missing from his desk and he has one hand behind his back.

"Seems like it, but the mess it causes isn't," we respond.

"But it seems so..."

"Let me tell you about access control. We have divisional groups, departmental groups and project groups. We have folders on our file-share machine with hierarchical access control based on those groups. And then we have someone who isn't in any group because he's a contractor. And he's only supposed to have access to one file buried in the hierarchy of files."

"Then there's another file in a completely different location. And another. Then he leaves, but he might come back, but no one knows when and so we make an exception for that special case and leave his account open without disabling or expiring it."

"The department head concerned says he'll let me know when the access can stop. Then the guy doesn't come back but another contractor does, and he needs access to different files, all in different places - but not the same files."

"Then the original guy comes back - but now he needs write access to files. And web access to our internal portal - but only certain parts. And he's using an iPad with a shite implementation of Excel, and they need him to be able to synchronise his spreadsheet with the data in one of those files he has access to... through Dropbox - but only on the day before the close of accounts for the month."

"And then the second guy needs the same thing, but he can't use Dropbox because his firewall won't let him because, oh I don't know, it's green and not a black firewall. And he's got three cables coming out of his box, so anyway if we could just give him FTP access to the server then that would be grand. The department head who originally authorised this left six months ago and no one really knows if the first guy's still working for us or not, but he should probably still have access just in case. THAT IS WHAT EXCEPTIONS ARE!"

"Yes, yes, I see your point, but really this is just about one person's password-" [kzerrt!]

We pop out our PRod and hit the Boss with a quick blast to the face, "That was just a bit of voltage," we say. "This is just a roll of old carpet. This is just a spade and those are just bags of lime. This is just a map of abandoned forest trails with vehicle access. Ordinarily I would treat this like every stupid and uninformed request and just ignore it - BUT IF YOU WANT - I can make an exception in this case. Is that what you'd like?" The Bastard nods in approval while the PFY checks the security camera to ensure the van is in its usual spot.

 **Honestly I don't have anything to say this week.**

 **Feel free to ask questions about any technical content.**

 **So until nest time this is SabaraOne logging out.**


	8. 2016-8 (1996-27)

**2016-8 (1996-27) Dummies don't grow on trees, right?**

 **POV: Composite**

We shoot around a corner, barely missing the sight of our prey darting down the next hallway. A telekinetic boost sends us careening down in pursuit. Several rooms and hallways pass by as we chase the target through the building, traveling from the sixth floor to Ground and everywhere in between. Other employees of the company run away screaming from the sight of a human being chased by a power-suited Mobian fox. We eventually chase our quarry to Mission Control, floating a few inches above the ground. Upon entering, we are instantly blasted off our feet as it were, tumbling into the corner with the scar from the time a former Boss fell on it after being electrocuted with a cattleprod.

We look towards the attack to see the Bastard crouched just inside the door with what looks suspiciously like a battery hammer. He nimbly jumps away from our thrown Disk and grabs a handgun from the desk. He shoots us in the head twice. We fall backwards to the ground. He gives a triumphant cry before we flip onto our feet and shoot him with our shotgun at point blank range. He collapses, missing most of his head and torso. We duck a stream of lead from behind as the PFY opens fire from the server room. We telekinetically pull him towards us. We draw our katana, using one to disarm him with a flat strike to the wrist and plunging the other into his chest. We slice his head off with a deft stroke with the first blade before allowing him to slide off the second, wiping the blood off and returning our blades to our back.

The Bastard's body makes the distinctive sound of a headset being removed and thrown to the desk in disgust. His voice emerges, slightly muffled, "Damnit Composite, quit using your dataform powers, it's unfair to us Users."

We explode into our True Form, a swirl of red data cubes, dissolve, and reform as Ada in front of our PC, which is displaying a result screen for the new Unreal Tournament Alpha. The phone rings.

After some pointing and wild gesticulating between the three of us, we slap the phone on hands-free.

"I'm trying to download a file from an FTP site in China, and it's stopping after one gigabyte," a beancounter's voice rings out. We tap a control on our keyboard, bringing up the firewall control panel, reading TODAY'S LIMIT: 1G.

"How big is the file" asks the Bastard.

"About 1.6 gigs."

The Bastard scribbles Tomorrow 1.5G on a whiteboard. We nod and open up the schedular. We know where this is going. We make a shadow puppet bird on our shoulder with one hand and a joystick motion with our right, indicating the download is a pirated game.

We glance at the excuse card calendar, an essential tool of any admin. Our sister Camanion has them in at least three formats. "It sounds like Network Destabilization from Low Voltage Fluoro Lights."

"Come again?" Asks the beancounter.

The PFY chips in, "When a fluorescent light turns on it sends a power spike down the line. In low voltage lights the effect is magnified."

***DUMMY MODE ON***

[From the bastard Glossary: DUMMY MODE, n. The mode in which a user, overcome by technical terms, will believe, and/ or do, anything he or she is told.]

"Where would the spikes be coming from?" asks the beancounter.

We take over the conversation, "I don't know, they're usually small, bar-like lights in signs or displays."

"THE FIRE EXIT SIGNS!" The beancounter cries excitedly.

"YES!" We agree, "They're above doors where our cable is run! Unfortunately we don't have the time nor the need to move the signs out of the way."

"Can you move the cables?"

"Not at all, that would be harder and more pointless than moving the signs."

"… I guess I'll bring the file in parts." [click]

"He won't do it," the PFY says.

"Ten quid?" We ask.

We and the PFY put ten quid notes under the Wager sign. The Bastard sets the FTP size limit to 20 MB for the beancounter's benefit.

The next day we grab the money and go to the fifth floor to drop some cable boxes and infrared cameras to make it look like the Network and Systems team is going to do some work later.

A few hours later the Bastard and PFY are in Mission Control with a group of fellow Bastards placing bets. In the meantime we're in the server room talking to the programs in the communal area.

"Hey Composite, what's up?" asks a female program, ironically named man. Her height in the physical world would be approximately 5'4" as opposed to our 5'9". She was the only program who didn't have any fear about us when we first arrived, only curiosity. This is probably because she is responsible for delivering help manual pages, hence her rather ironic name. She has modified her Disk parameters so that she is a green base with standard blue circuits.

"Yep! Our supervisor has something planned. Be at the view window in ten seconds. Tell your friends. Watching Users do stupid things is always fun right?" We respond

"Yeah, it usually is," man responds, "Care to spill it?"

"Nope!"

About nine and a half seconds later our friends are all at the view window. It is simply a giant screen often used to show instructional or entertainment vids. We're recording the proceedings so that we can send them to Risa and Camanion. Even the mute drone of init is here. We've still never spoken to him. We replay the last minute from Mission control.

"-You all know the rules," The Bastard says, "20 quid per player, except the PFY and myself, who get first pick of a free player as hosts."

As the PFY collects bets, (as do man and her boyfriend cron,) Jimmy from a few blocks down asks, "Don't you have a new trainee? Ada?"

"Yes, but she's unlucky enough to have 'accidentally' had a priority one call from nature," the Bastard lies.

"Okay, sucks for her," says Jimmy, thinking the accident in question involves a horse laxative.

"First to the stairwell gets the pot!" Says the PFY, flipping a comically large switch. At this point the feed cuts to live split-screen from the various IR cameras as the lights in Beancounter Central go down and the fire alarm goes off.

The toll of the moved fire exit signs will require plenty of plaster to remove. The next obstacle is the cable boxes we left lying around, as well as a couple of the cameras. A voluntary slowdown field allowed the programs to view the video at User speed as opposed to a slideshow.

"It looks like… What is that User game, with the ball and the flippers on the table? Football?" cron asks. He is a program of medium build with unmodified gray and blue appearance. He's responsible for ensuring scheduled tasks like backups and log file rotation happen on time. We honestly don't know what man sees in him, but we really don't care that much either.

"I think it's golf," man says.

"Pinball, Beancounter Pinball," we say.

"Beancounter?" systemd asks. He's a tall, thin yellow and orange program responsible for starting and stopping processes.

"It's a type of wetware program," Risa says from a comms window. The other window emits a thump as Camanion literally falls onto the floor laughing. "Beancounters, or Accountants manage money."

"Ah, got it."

There's a muffled cry of pain and curse from Camanion's window. She pops up with an expression that would make even the Bastard run in fright, "Risa, how many times have I told you not to leave your 'toys' lying around?" She asks, holding up an Etherkiller, a cross between a power cord and an ethernet cable.

"Sorry," Risa says sheepishly.

"Blast!" cron yells, "atrun wins!"

man passes over the cash and atrun pokes cron on the shoulder to remind him to get back to work before starting his victory walk to do virtually the same job.

On the window the Bastard is raking in the winnings.

And they say there's no money in networking anymore.

 **Sorry I'm late. I honestly forgot to start writing in time. It shouldn't happen again.**

 **I've started some concept art for Composite, but it's pretty bad… In fact it makes MS Paint look downright professional. I'll have to keep on trying…**

 **So until next time, this is SabaraOne, logging out.**


	9. 2016-9 (2015-3)

**I've got no excuse. I was procrastinating and didn't start until about 5:40 on Saturday, upload day. So there's a good chance I'll get this one up late too. Sorry. Ishould be back on schedule next week.**

 **2016-9 (2015-3) So that's what BYOD stands for…**

 **POV: Composite**

"Bring your own DEVICE!" The PFY cries in mock realization.

"Of course! What did you think it ment?" The Boss asks

"Bring Your Own Drink," the Bastard says, gesturing at a half empty case of chilled Newky Browns he and the PFY have been working on for the last half hour.

"Bring your own Dung," we say, holding up a plastic back holding a suspicious brown material. That portable digitizing laser Camanion gave us is blasted useful.

"Why would we want you to bring in your crap?!" The Boss asks, disgusted.

"I thought it was a pretty _osikla_ idea," we comment.

"I thought it was Bring Your Own Dog," the PFY says, indicating a low growling from the old tape safe.

"You have a dog?" We ask.

"Nope! Found him in the park, though getting him in here was a real chore. Fought me the whole way."

"Why the hell did you bring a dog then?" The Boss is getting a little heated.

"Well, I was thinking about getting a dog a couple of months ago, and when I saw the Bring Your Own Dog day I thought if numbers were low you probably wouldn't have one again – so I brought one in hoping you might have a Bring Your Own Dog day again."

"BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE," the Boss snaps again. "DEVICE! Why the hell would we want you to bring your own dog anyway – or drink?!"

"Oh, I always have a couple of cases of Newky sitting under the server room floor in front of the process chiller output," the Bastard says "In case of emergencies. But I bought another couple of cases in for the Bring Your Own Drink day."

"DEVICE! WHO WOULD HAVE A BRING YOUR OWN DRINK DAY ANYHOW?"

"Well, we did think it was a bit foolish," we slip. Thankfully the boss interprets "We" as the three of us instead of "We" the single fusion entity, "But my coworkers said the same about installing Windows Vista – And Windows 8 – And had we known we would have said the same about having the users bring their personal devices for work use.

"And just how much of that have you had?" The Boss asks.

"Me? None. Those two have gone through about a case and a half though. I was about to go get another for them."

"Why not?" The Boss asks, confused.

"Because I don't like being drunk, unlike those two." The fact that we _can't_ get drunk not withstanding.

"How did you misinterpret BOOD?"

"You mean it's actually a thing?" The Bastard asks innocently.

"Of course, studies show that 95 percent of people bring a device from home. If we use it we'll save a fortune in machines!"

"But pay a fortune in support," The PFY comments, "But what type of device are we talking, phones and tablets?"

"Whatever they want to bring in, laptops, desktops, tablets, it's all about savings."

An IM pops up from the Bastard _Anyone got some old crap kit? I've got a VAX 11/780 and a memory expansion unit. Should make the Boss's office nice and cozy._

 _We'll see what our sisters have._

The Bastard speaks audibly, "But we'll have to deal with their virus problems, their slowdown problems, THE INCOMPATIBILITY PROBLEMS!"

"But 90 percent of the work is just emailing documents, so as long as it can do that we're saving money."

"One, we're still loosing money on support, and two, none of the reported problems will have anything to do with actual work. They'll have to do with ebbay and personal email and games and porn." The PFY says.

"But machines are a bigger spend than support. Besides, aren't your home machines higher spec?"

"Nope!" We say. Of course we don't have a machine at home, our work machine is home.

"So…" The PFY says, "you want US to bring Our machines in?"

"Just think of the company spend, if we save money on machines we'll have the money for that espresso machine you were looking at, or something else you really want."

"I'd really like another Newky Brown for a start," the Bastard comments.

"No more drink!" The Ex-Boss snaps. "I still don't get how you misinterpreted BYOD, there's been posters in the cafe for the last week!"

"That would be it. All we saw was the calendar appointment for 'BYOD.'" We say, "We haven't been to the cafeteria since we saw the delivery of Dog Rolls."

"Dog rolls?" The Boss blinks.

"Yeah," the Bastard says, "Slice them down the middle, cover them in sauce and diced gherkin, bake them or an hour and call it meatloaf special."

"Really?" The Boss gags.

"Sure! It's one of those cost-cutting measures. It's also a cunning plan by the Yanks to poison us all by putting too much seasoning to be safe." The PFY says, lurching off on a conspiracy theory.

"Not in here," we say, noticing the Boss is gulping more than he should, preparing for an emergency upload, "We just cleaned the carpets."

The Boss stumbles off to toss his cookies elsewhere, opening the one door he really shouldn't have.

"GET HIM POOCH!" We yell. Surprisingly the angry tan blur rips the Boss's leg open pretty bad on the way out.

"Run for the Cafeteria!" The Bastard yells, "And get them to throw a meatloaf at you!"

* * *

"Another Newky?" The PFY asks.

"Don't mind if I do," the Bastard says.

"Isn't the BYOD thing all week?" We ask.

"Yes"

"In that case…" We rez our Ki and place a call, "Hey sis, got any crap kit lying around?"

"Yep, why do you ask?" The Blue and pink Mobian fox who responds inquires

"It's BYOD Week."

"Enough said!" Camanion says happily.

 **Well, that's all so until next time, this is SabaraOne, logging out.**


	10. 2016-10

**Yay! My first original episode! This one isn't based on any particular BOFH episode, unlike my previous ones, hence why there's no original episode number.**

 **And from here on, just assume POV Composite unless I say otherwise**

 **2016-11**

"So, you want us to do _what_ exactly?" We ask.

"Well," the PFY comments, "The Boss is becoming a bit of a liability. And we all know what happens to Bosses who become liabilities."

"This is your first solo mission," the Bastard says, "Don't F*ck it up."

"We won't let you down. But first a quick game of UT?" We ask.

"Be rude not to." The PF says.

***TEN MINUTES LATER***

The phone rings.

"Hello, Systems and Networks," we say, picking it up.

"Hello, this is John with a great offer! We're selling 100 Meg Ethernet cards by the dozen and CAT-3 cable by the mile!"

"I'm sorry, we're not interested."

"Oh, I'm sure you are, care to meet me at the Dorchester at noon tomorrow?"

"Okay, I guess I can swing that, see you then," we say, hanging up and slapping a note into our calendar. It could make a good backup plan, considering how low the budget is currently. We hear a slight clicking sound from down the hall.

"Hey, does anyone else hear that?" We ask.

"Hear what? Oh, that clicking? That can't be good," the PFY says.

There's a slight scratch a the door of Mission Control.

We can't see anything on CCTV, so we morph into Ada and pull a sword from Hammerspace. In our experience when we can't see whatever it is on the security cameras, it's not generally a good thing. We open the door and swing the sword at head level… Completely missing the familiar looking tan canine wetware program that pads into Mission Control, snaps at the PFY, ignores the Bastard and takes up station in front of our desk. We revert to Base Form and the dog has no reaction. We walk over to our desk and hold out the back of our hand tentatively. The dog leans forward and sniffs before licking our hand gently.

"I think it likes you."" The PFY says from his position on the far side of the room, where he slid his leather gaming wheelie chair to when the dog snapped at him.

"It seems to…" We say, "Hey, did the Boss report you for bringing the dog in on BYOD day?"

"He tried reporting to the CEO. Except that the CEO is off on a junket and the email server mysteriously lost the email sometime between when the Boss sent it and when the CEO got back. Though I do wonder how the dog survived this long," the Basterd says.

"Well then, We've got the perfect plan to get the Boss fired. We'll need a dog leash, some way to make it take a crap, and the CCTV logs."

"What's your plan?" The PFY asks.

"Simple! We take it up to the boardroom, have it take a dump in the pot plant and modify the CCTV so that it looks like the Boss did it."

The Bastard points at one of the tape safes and comments "Got a good supply of just about every useful medication in there. Grab a laxative or two. That'll do it. You'll need to supply your own leash though. We never needed one

***TWO MINUTES LATER***

"Hey Camanion, you have any dog supplies? We need a dish, a leash, and some food now. A crate would be grand too."

"I'm just not even going to ask," says the blue and purple fox-like face of our sister and wetware template Camanion says, tapping on a keyboard. We sign off and disconnect, closing a window that looks similar to Skype on our computer. We clench Ada's left fist before reaching behind our back and pull a large laser out of Hammerspace. The laser starts to glow at the tip and shoots out beams of light, forming a curled piece of fabric with a buckle in the middle and a metal loop, a fabric harness, and a long piece of fabric with a metal link clip. The dog gave no complaint as we strapped the collar, harness and leash. We digitize two bowls and some food. We take the dog up to the board room and feed and water it, slipping a laxative into the food. Five minutes later we're back in Mission Control with a video editor open and the CCTV tapes loaded.

The next day the Boss is in trouble. The pee on the table and turd in the pot plants hurts his standing pretty bad. The last nail in the coffin comes when three elevator-loads worth of shiny new "state of the art" crap shows up on the second floor. Getting rid of one of the most annoying auditors was just the icing on the cake.

Our new dog Howler is fitting in quite nicely. We took him to the vet and found that he didn't have anything worth worrying about and is in remarkably good condition for a stray off the street. He now lives in the old tape safe room, which the PFY has learned not to open.

"So, guess we'd better ring the slave traders?" We ask, calling up a placement agency. "Hello, this is Ada Hopper, Simon's assistant. We need a new Boss…"

Time for yet another round of interviews!

 **And that's the lot. There won't be a Demon Admin post Saturday unfortunately. I'm also going to soon have a brief glossary of** _ **Mando'a**_ **terms that Composite uses on my profile.**

 **So until next time, this is SabaraOne, logging out!**


	11. 2016-11 (1999-3)

**2016-12 (1999-3) What's a Disaster Recovery site again?**

"…And so I'll need to see all your DR equipment and planning," the boss rambles. He's apparently gotten it into his head that the company's going to sink like the _Titanic_ if we get hit with a disaster. The Bastard's joke that an earthquake during work hours would actually improve performance didn't get the expected chuckle of assent.

One more for the Seismic Therapy then.

And so he wants to see all our DR kit to see what needs some work. And we know that's just going to cause problems.

Not to put too fine a point on it, we told him a load of old bollocks. "Oh, we're fully prepared with offsite backups both cloud and tape, backup recovery plans, DR plans with vendors and three cold-site recovery sites. The longest part would be sticking the tapes in the different servers. Client desktops would be brought online based on the employee and their importance to the company plan."

"Okay, all that's left is to get a tour of the sites!" The Boss says happily.

And now we're up a thinwire without a terminator. The Boss is inevitably going to find out it's crap and ask why. And none of us want to listen to the Boss talk about professional conduct and crap. And we also don't _really_ want to terminate him.

"So," we ask the Bastard, "why don't we just take him to one of the cold sites and tell him the offsite tape storage blokes don't allow site visits?"

"Tapes will work, but cold site's a goner."

"Too cold?"

"Too hired out to other tenants. They're usually in the heart of the business district, so I rent them out and send the cash to more deserving projects like upgrading the company's internet links."

"Unusually altruistic of you." The PFY comments

"Not at all, I reconfigured the user's switches so they don't get any boost from the upgrade. But he's bound to find…"

We chime in, "Not really… Here's what we're going to do…" The next day the Boss gets into a blacked out fan with us and the Bastard.

"Bloody dark in here," the Boss comments.

"It's a loaner from the tape storage blokes. They have important clients after all." We respond

"Oh," the Boss says, self importance boosted, "So where are we going?"

"To one of the cold sites. We're doing one per day if that's all right." We say in a tone to suggest his lack of choice.

Two hours later we glide down a ramp into the subbasement of the DR center. We enter the DR server room through a freight elevator for security reasons.

"It looks familiar…" The Boss says, confused.

We ad lib, "We make the DR centers similar to the building for familiarity of users."

"That's a good idea!" The Boss says happily. "…But it's quiet."

"DR centers are only fired up in an emergency. It costs less in electricity and maintanence."

"Of course"

We make our way back to the office, "Where to next?" Asks the Boss.

"I thought we'd pick you up at six at your house," the Bastard says, "That'll let us get to the Welsh office."

Once the Boss wanders off, we signal the PFY. The van cab's window rolls down. "Welsh tomorrow. Turn over the server room tiles, leave some pork rinds in the elevator and put up some maps and pin-ups. And for goodness sake, get more of the city in. 200 times around the block is just asking for trouble!"

"And keep Howler quiet! I'm pretty sure I heard him and id the Boss hears we're screwed." The Bastard says.

This DR stuff, it's just work, work, work!


	12. 2016-11b

**Sorry I got this week's up late. The Real World decided it hates me. Hopefully I'll have the next chapter of Fusion up on time, but I'm starting to doubt it. Sorry in advance.**

 **This one technically isn't Demon Admin, but it's pretty close. It focuses on Camanion and Risa and is based on the exploits of Redditor Tuxedo_Jack, the closest to a real-world BOFH I've ever seen. His Flair on Tales From Tech Support is quite accurate when he describes himself as "The love child of Simon Travaaglia and Ysanne Isard." I'll explain who Isard is at the end. Sufficent to say it's a very accurate description.**

 **20016-12B**

 **POV: Camanion**

So I walk into my office (where I work as a systems administrator,) my third cup of _very_ strong coffee in hand, and immediately notice something wrong. One of my "projects" has apparently gone missing from my test bench. I'd disappear it home, but the beancounters have gotten annoyed with the amount of crap networking kit I've borrowed for home, despite my (quite true) comments that the kit is more useful for me at home. Because it's crap, not because I want it for home

So what's missing is a 5-port gigabit Ethernet switch that I'd modified. Bit of necessary background, an Etherkiller is a wonderful little gadget that is basically what you get when you cut the plug off a power cord and one end off an Ethernet networking cable. You take a power strip, your etherkiller, and a computer that needs to be destroyed for some reason (like say the vendor won't take it back because it's not dead despite the fact that we both know it's on the way out and won't be dead until _after_ the warranty expires and the reason that the diagnostics are coming up clean is that the diagnostics are "faulty" (programmed to always come up clean)… Or you're doing Tech Support in your spare time and the customer says they don't want the machine back) and plug the little bugger in. 3-prong into power strip, ethernet into the onboard port in the computer and power strip into wall. Flip it on and off about half a dozen times and that machine's sorted. For extra fun plug the transmitting wires of the Ethernet cable into phase and the receiving wires into neutral. That way you get a nice bang along with the computer cooking.

So my switch was modified in a very specific way. I removed all the earth wiring, splashed some solder connecting the power jack to the ethernet jacks and replaced the nice transformer power adapter with a straight power cable from a box I'd decommissioned. Forget Ethernet, this is Etherkiller 2.0, 5 ports of computer-cooking goodness. So is it any wonder that its missing status worried me?

" _Osik,_ " Risa comments from the computer on my arm she lives and travels in, "Which idiot borrowed the EtherGrenade?" She dubbed my project the EtherGrenade, under the premise that like a standard handgun, the Etherkiller can only kill one computer at a time, but the EtherGrenade can kill up to five. Composite also taught her a significant amount of _Mand'oa_ profanity.

"Yup, that can't be good," I respond. "I hope whatever idiot took it takes it home. It'll serve them right."

"After all, they didn't obey your sign," Risa adds. The sign in question is a large poster I made myself. It has a picture of an Etherkiller on it and the message "Don't take anything from my desk. Use at your own risk." In font large enough that _I_ can read it halfway across the room.

So the next day one of the new (human) consultants wanders over to my desk.

"Uh… Hey, Camanion, can I have a word?"

"Hmm…?" I ask, flicking an ear in acknowledgment.

"It's this switch I took from your desk for home." At this I whirl around from the quiet game of Spider I've been playing between crises. He's holding a decidedly charred piece of equipment I think I recognize. I reach out my right paw and he obligingly drops it in. I feel it for a moment before responding.

"Yes. One of _my_ experiments. Which had a standard 140v AC power cable in a hole that had clearly been modified to accept it. When nobody sells networking kit that doesn't use either a Wall Wart or a Brick-On-A-Leash power supply. When there's a sign so large I can read it from halfway across the room telling you not to take _anything_ from my test bench. When there was a perfectly good _unmodified_ switch sitting on my main desk _still in the shrink-wrap!"_

"But they told me…" He blusters.

"To take a switch off my desk, yes. My _main_ desk. The one without a Do Not Touch sign. The one that I didn't wire to a 50V DC supply to discourage idiots from touching."

"I was wearing rubber gloves from my last task! And isn't that a safety violation?"

"THAT'S WHY IT'S ONLY 50V DC! It'll sting like the devil, but it won't actually cause any damage unless you've got the kind of heart condition you get Social Security from!" I stop to breathe for a moment and calm down, "…Okay, what did you loose?"

"A brand new modem, router, motherboard and Smart TV. Everything's under warranty except the modem, and I've got renters' insurance on it."

"Okay. Tell you what, take the switch here," I flick my tail in the direction of my main desk, where a shrink-wrapped 5 port switch resides, "We buy them in bulk at about five bucks a pop so the Beancounters won't complain. Or you can take one from the spares rooms," I gesture expansively at a row of doors, "I can't remember which one we put them in."

"Second from the right," Risa interjects from her position across the room, where she works as the Network admin.

"…Right."

"Uh… I think I'll just," the consultant starts.

"Oh, I insist," I say, slowly running my paw along the Cat-5 'o nine-tails in my lap. (basically a whip made from looping some Ethernet cables through a D-ring with painter's tape for a handle,) I've never used it except for percussive maintenance on the more sturdy severs, but I'm waiting for an excuse. Composite can play with cattleprods for all I care, but I prefer a slightly more direct form of punishment for stupidity. If I can get away with it, of course.

The consultant gulps and edges towards the supply closet, coming out with a switch, still in the shrink-wrap. Pity. I hadn't "configured" that one yet with such things as the upside-down webpage and Automatic Rick Roll hacks. It is absolutely embarrassing just how easy it is to re-shrink-wrap a device. Ah well.

 **And that's it. I hope you liked it.**

 **So like I started to mention earlier, Ysanne Isard is from the Star Wars Legends timeline, specifically the X-wing series. She's the head of Imperial Intelligence. She eventually took over the Empire after Endor. So let's go over the highlights of her career.**

 **Shortly before the Battle of Yavin, she leaked information to the Emperor that her father (the current head of II) was planning to defect to the Rebels. The accuracy of this data is unknown. The only punishment for this crime was death. There is a persistent rumor that she was on the other side of the blaster. She became head of II**

 **She was given command of the Super Star Destroyer Lusankya (The sister ship of Vader's flagship Executor)**

 **After Endor, she sacrificed Coruscant (Capital of the Empire) to the New Republic… After releasing a bio-engineered plague that almost certainly would have caused the complete extinction of** _ **at least**_ **three non-human species had the New Republic taken the world and began treatment as little as eight days later with the goal of bankrupting the Republic due to the exterminate cost of medicine. Bonus points for splintering the different species alliances that make up the Republic.**

 **Captured Rebels and placed them in a prison facility in the Lusankya. She would then brainwash them with commands, usually to kill a prominent Rebel or traitor before "accidentally" releasing them. The brainwashing was so effective that it was completely undetectable, even by the victim, until their activation signal was sent.**

 **The Lusankya had been secretly buried underground on Coruscant. After the Rebel capture of the world (and after the Krytos virus had become well established, though not as well as she would have liked) she launched, killing millions.**

 **She then took control of the Bacta market. Bacta being a sort of miracle medicine and the only cure for Krytos.**

 **After loosing the Lusankya to the Republic, she effectively captured Rogue Squadron and used them in a plot to attempt to retake it. Her (fatal) failure was due as much to luck as anything else.**

 **So I'd say that Tuxedo_Jack's Flair is pretty accurate. Or at least he wishes he could get away with it. Again, he comes closer than anybody else I've encountered personally or over the internet.**

 **EDIT: modified the description of the Cat-5 o' Nine Tails to match a YouTube video I found last night while looking for Tuxedo_Jack's channel.**


	13. 2016-12 (2006-27)

**2016-12 (2006-27)**

"…So I need one of those five button mice," The Boss finishes a ten minute ramble about how important it is to have the absolute top-line kit. He really shouldn't spend all his time talking about upgrading his kit. That's Systems and Networks work.

"So why five buttons?" The Bastard asks.

"Because they can do so much!" The Boss enthuses.

We pop into the conversation, "What can they do? I mean, I can see the limitations of a one button mouse. I can see a two button mouse causing problems. I can understand why you'd want a scroll wheel, but why do you need a five button?"

"Because I can program them with my most commonly used functions."

"Yes," The PFY says dryly, "But Sleep, Eat, and Crap aren't computer functions."

The Boss wisely ignores him, "And I was thinking that we should allow the users to upgrade their mice, let them choose what mouse they want."

The Bastard is gobsmacked, "Do you know what that would do to our Small Items budget?"

"It's just a mouse and we were going to replace them anyway. It'll help morale if they are allowed to choose their own mouse, how bad can it be?"

"Wouldn't it be more efficent to just burn a bunch of our small items money?" The Bastard asks.

"I…"

"Yeah," we say, warming to the idea so to speak, "We go to the bank, withdraw the entire small items budget and burn it. Burn it in the cafeteria even. We'll call it the Mouse Replacement Project."

"It won't be that bad, besides, I was reading in a management rag that if people are allowd to exercise even small amounts of control over their workplace they're happier for it. And if you treat people with respect it'll make them respect you."

"We'd have to have some respect to show them, but you're saying that we should tip cash down the toilet to keep the users happy?" We inquire.

"I think you're wrong. Mice aren't that expensive."

While we did upon first arriving have the attitude that Users can do no wrong common among programs, we lost it *very* quickly. The only real difference we can find is that Users are based on slower, less efficient wetware than our dual enhanced wetware/software architecture. "Of course they are, either we'll run out of money or the small items form will reject the purchase of the expensive mice, which will actually hurt morale. It's just a bad idea all around."

"I'll remember to get the form changed for this case, but it's still not a bad idea."

"Of course it is! Someone will choose the most expensive mouse money can buy just because they can. We won't even be able to buy backup tapes! And haven't we told you about exceptions?"

"It doesn't matter, we're doing it!" The Boss says in Executive Decision mode.

***TWO DAYS LATER***

"So how are things on the front line of mouse replacement?" The Boss asks happily, wandering into Mission Control.

"I thought It was a bunch of Huggy Feely crap, but I bought a new mouse and you know what? I feel great!" The PFY says.

"It's the small things that count! Now, what did you get? A five-button wireless… IS THAG GOLD?!"

Yeah, a bargain! I picked it up on Ebay for four thousand quid"

"YOU SPENT FOUR-THOUSAND QUID ON A SOLID GOLD MOUSE!"

"But it looked so nice!"

"It's… Wearing off onto your mousepad?"

"I'm not sure, I was gaming for a few hours last night and noticed a tingge of yellow on the pad."

"You're wearing out your mouse!"

"I think not. At the rate the gold price is going up it's holding its value nicely."

"You'll have to sell it. We can't afford it."

We give him a what-did-we-tell-you look.

"What about my morale, my right to choose?" The PFY asks in mock outrage, winding the Boss up for his own amusement of course.

"STUFF THAT! Sell it and put the money back!"

"But…"

"DO IT!"

***The Next Day***

I thought I told you to selll that!" The Boss cries.

"I did!" The PFY says. He bought it on eBay for a quid."

"YOU SOLD IT TO HIM FOR ONE BLOODY QUID!"

""You said you wanted it gone, so I put it on a one day auction!"

"And as luck would have it, I found it!" The Bastard says happily, "Of course the five thousand pound shipping charge turned off most buyers, but I was able to pick it up in person. But it's not as bad as it sounds. I painted my mouse gold and slapped some lead weights in it."

"WHAT?"

"And besides, you should always check the quality of things you're buying from me."

"So you sold your mouse for 4000 quid and bought it back for one!"

"I missed it! And I do feel so valued!"

*thud*

"Better open a window" we sigh, "We need to tell him about the 'premium food' we bought for Howler." The dog raises his head slightly at his name before going back to sleep under our desk.

"You didn't pull a BYOD did you?" The PFY asks

"Yup! There was blood in the water, we alll smelled it. Hell, even Howler noticed didn't you boy?"

 **Sorry about last week's being labeled 2016-12. I confused myself somehow. I'll probably have that fixed by the weekend because I've had a series of emergencies in rhe Real World. Hopefully I'll have a new chapter of Fusion ready by then. It's starting to look like I might actually pull it off. I'm hopingiI own't go into something like my first story (post a chapter, then anytime between two to six weeks until the next one.)**


	14. 2016-13 (2010-10)

**Sorry about not getting a new Fusion chapter up. I've barely started it yet. I'm also sorry about the numbreing of episodes which seems a bit wierd over the last couple weeks. I'm just going to start my numbering from where I think it should be and go from there.**

 **2016-13 (2010-10)**

"A security robot?" The PFY gasps, "Really?"

"Really," the Boss says, nodding

"And we have no say in the matter?"

"It's a security thing."

"A security thing that's coming out of *our* budget," we say.

"Just the initial cost, the operating expenses come out of security's budget."

"Yes," the Bastard adds dryly, "The hundred pounds of electricity per year."

"So what'll it be? Something like Robocop or the 'Danger Will Robinson' kind?" The Bastard asks.

We swallow our protest that the robot only said "Danger Will Robinson" once in a single episode. "Or maybe something with twin miniguns like that one from T3?" We ask, thinking about how a quick BIOS 'upgrade' could be used to drastically improve client liaison meetings.

"No, but I've got a picture of it," the Boss says.

…

"So more like R2-D2." The PFY states as the Boss shuffles some papers, "So what will it have? A sidearm? Taser? Billy club?"

"It's unarmed," The Boss sees the disapointment on our faces, "But it does have a full 360 degree camera."

"A 360 degree camera that will help the company from here to the next stairwell," The PFY comments.

"It can interface with the lift to access all floors. It has some logic."

"I think I may have heard of that," we deadpan, "So, why are we getting this again?"

"There's been a spade of thefts from the Executive Rooms."

"Thefts? Laptops? Car keys?"

"Not important."

The Bastard closes the door to Mission Control, "What are the thefts?"

"Uh… Chocolates, some demerara sugar sachets, the fancy teabags from the wooden presentation case in the board room..."

"Morning tea supplies?! We're spending… How much?"

We glance at the Boss's monitor (Advantages of being an AI with a constant remote control link to the Boss's PC,) and say "17,300 pounds."

"SEVENTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS! WE'RE SPENDING SEVENTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS TO PROTECT MORNING TEA SUPPLIES! YOU COULD BUY THEM NEW MORNING TEA SUPPLIES EVERY WEEK AND STILL NOT WASTE SEVENTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS! YOU COULD PAY SOMEONE TO WATCH THEM OVERNIGHT AND STILL NOT WASTE SEVENTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS! YOU COULD BUY A BLOODY SAFE TO KEEP THEM IN! YOU COULD USE THE SAFE THAT'S ALREADY IN THE BOARDROOM!"

"But this way we get to catch the criminal on camera and prevent crime!"

"Yes," we add, "And the camera will also catch the crim reaching into their pocket for a screwdriver before the camera dies and the hard drive is removed for a date with a drill."

"Ah! But this unit has a strongbox that cannot be removed, and it's got evasion logic!"

We don't think it's prudent to mention that all the evasion logic in the world isn't going to stop a half-Mobian with telekinesis. The PFY murmurs something about Splinter Cell before commenting, "Sounds pretty sneaky."

"It is, it learns about its environment and can pass the knowledge to other units."

"Other units?" The Bastard says dangerously.

"Yes," the Boss rambles on obliviously, "This one's a prototype, but if it works we'll get two more to cover the building more thoroughly."

The Bastard's tone darkens even further, "So we'll be spending three times seventeen thousand pounds?"

"No, the second two are only fifteen thousand!"

"Well, that makes it all right!" The PFY exclaims sarcastically. Howler, sensing the tension in the room glares at the Boss and starts to growl softly. The Boss finally gets the message (or at least part of it) and leaves Mission Control at speed.

..D-Day arrives…

"And I declare this robot… Er… Open!" The Head of Security says, pressing a button on a remote. An anticlimactic green light turns on and the bot glides out of the office. Howler growls at the robot and lunges forward. We call him back and he sits back down next to us. We can smell the fear and anger coming off him. It's so strong that the PFY's nose is wrinkling slightly.

"So, what floors does it cover?" The Bastard asks.

"All the office floors, not B1 and B2. It goes from Ground to 6, reporting in to the security offices when it gets back down.

"Sounds feasible," the PFY admits grudgingly.

…Later That Night…

"And here it comes," a patch on a ceiling tile radios to the Bastard and PFY, who are hiding in the ceiling space next to the lift.

***WWWHhhhhiiiiIIIIIRRRRRRRR***

"Bit of a design flaw," we comment, sliding up into the ceiling and reverting to Base Form, "A 360 degree camera that doesn't go up and down."

"So, who's going to push the button?" The PFY asks, nodding at a modified Staples Easy button wired up to an old Android tablet.

The Bastard holds his hands over it, followed by the PFY, followed by us. We glance around the tile and look at the robot approaching the door.

"Okay… … … Now!" We say as the robot pushes the lift call button. All three of us push the Big Red Button. We switch our visuals to a blue-glowing Full Spectrum/EM scan just in time to watch a burst of EM radiation burst from the tablet as it executes the command to launch a macro on the Bastard's machine. First, internal control of the lift is locked out. Next the lift is sent to B2, and once it arrives, the 6th floor door opens.

***PING*** … ***TING*** … ***CLINK*** … ***CRASH!***

"Another design flaw," the Bastard says, "No 'logic' to check if there's actually a lift before entering an empty shaft. But with that 360 degree camera we jjust saved the company a couple o hundred quid on the lift safety survey."

"If we weren't going to push the boardroom safe down after it," we respond, our arms already starting to glow green-white with telekinetic energy we'll use to push it down. The safe crashes out of the ceiling space and the Bastard and PFY heave it over the edge. We punch downward, increasing its speed dramatically. ***CRASH!***

"So just seventeen grand down the crapper then," the PFY comments, "Now who wants some of the good tea?"

 **Actually, I should probably do a bit of Fusion writing. I'm currently waiting for a new Minecraft modpack to pregenerate a large area around spawn... Nah, I'm having too much fun reading OseanSoldier's work. It's good stuff, I'd highly reccomend it.**


	15. 2016-14 (2010-11)

**Seriously, I love the robot war arc. It's my favorite arc in the series. Of course, if you define an arc as three or more episodes of a usually serial series with a distinct plot, there's not really much competition.**

 **2016-14 (2010-11) Robot Wars Part the Second  
**

"I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!" The Boss cries hysterically, rubbing a few prominent bruises.

"What was it going to do? 360-degree camera you to death?" We ask, masking our extreme interest by reaching for a game controller.

"IT HAD A CIRCULAR SAW IN ITS HANDS!"

"It has hands?!" The PFY asks excitedly.

"Well, it's claw!"

"IT HAS A CLAW!"

"WHATEVER THE THING COMING OUT THE SIDE OF IT IS!"

"It didn't have anything coming out the side of it," the Bastard says.

"It does now and it's holding a circular saw!"

"Tell us about the part where you were almost killed again?" The PFY asks, masking his interest by reaching for some peanuts.

"Well, it attacked me with a circular saw as soon as.I got out of the lift. I would have been hurt pretty badly if the extension cord hadn't gotten tangled around a desk…"

…

"I TOLD YOU WE SHOULD HAVE GON WITH PETROL POWERED SAW!" The Bastard yells at the PFY once he's gotten back from driving the Boss to his workplace trauma counciling session.

"HE'D HAVE HEARD IT A MILE AWAY!" The PFY argues.

"Besides," we say, injecting the voice of reason, "We'd have to have put a second arm so it could start it. And no we couldn't have started it and left it for the Boss, he's too unreliable coming in on time, the saw would have run out of gas. But at least the Boss bought the story about it going insane after falling down a lift shaft."

"How did they catch it in the end?" The Bastard asks.

We almost burst out laughing, "They didn't. Howler was taking his usual route outside when he accidentally unplugged the saw. The robot locked on to him and chased him around the floor for a few laps until he managed to shake it going down a stairwell. Or more accurately, jumped out of the way as the robot fell down after him. He's probably already forgotten the incident."

"Which is why they bought the story so quickly."

"Yes, and what's even better, the Beancounters returned the unopened units with a bill for the damages."

"That could cause some problems."

"You mean when the bot company tells them a fall down the lift shaft couldn't cause it to grow an arm and a saw or make massive changes to it's ROM so it becomes a Hunter/Killer?"

"Yes…?"

"And that's why we switched the electric saw for a battery-operated unit."

"Ah," the Bastard says happily, "The bot company's on one floor, isn't it?"

…A FEW DAYS LATER…

"So," the Boss says, coming into Mission Control with a crate, "The bot company overhauled the unit. Apparently it was a… Loose… Wire," he glances down at a shipping receipt, "A… Loose wire in the… GPS circuit?" He delivers this load of bullshit without a hint of disbelief.

"…Caused it to grow an arm and a circular saw?" We ask incredulously.

"Yes, the say it's a known bug."

…

"A KNOWN BUG?!" The PFY asks, confused at how the Boss could possibly believe something that blatantly stupid.

We grin and reach for the box of antipersonnel equipment.

…TWO DAYS LATER…

"Another known bug sorted out," the Boss says, "It can start shooting ball bearings at high speed from ankle height when the battery is low. Did it when it got to their office, shot out their glass door and Xerox."

…TEN MINUTES LATER…

"Security screws," the PFY comments, "I think they may be on to us."

"Yes, because when the thing came out of the crate at them with a saw in its hands they probably just thought it was caused by a power surge," We say sarcastically, "But it's not a problem. Watch this," we hold out our hand and focus. The screws vibrate before spinning out of their sockets, "See? Now get that stun gun battery we built earlier."

…THE NEXT DAY…

"Another loose wire," the Boss says, not as enthusiastically as the last few times.

"Well, hopefully nothing's shaken loose in the transit van," we say.

Once the Boss has left, we start in on the crate with telekinesis.

"Hey," the PFY starts, "Does anyone else hear that?"

"Hear wha-? Oh, that sounds like a small two-stroke engine!" We yelp, spinning the box around as the Boss walks back in for a status report.

***CRASH***

Five minutes later we're looking down the stairwell at an overturned chainsaw-wielding robot. "Not bad," we muse as the Bastard and the Boss head off to hospital.

"Right," the PFY says, kicking some packaging down after it, "Should I go get it? Refuel, reprogram and return et?"

"Yeah- no, we've got a better idea. But don't go get it until the chainsaw's out of gas," we say over the noise of the saw.

"You think it'd play dead?"

"We'd program it to."

After another ten minutes a dormant robot sits in Mission Control. We connect it to a computer and sync our own comms with the same machine. A Skype-like window appears on the screen, showing a split view of our sisters.

"Hey Comp- Where's Composite?" Risa asks.

"Right here," we say, waving Ada's hand in a greetin gesture.

"Okay, so what've you got for us?" Camanion asks.

"You ever wanted to get into security robot programming?" We respond.

"Secu…? Oh, this is going to be fun!" Risa says happily, "I've been looking for an opportunity to try out some of my non-lethal weapons."

" _Non_ -lethal?" The PFY asks dryly.

"Oh, is that Steven? We're _so_ not worthy! Are you really _the_ PFY?" Risa asks, one of two times we ever hear her in fangirl mode. Of course the number of living people we can think of who she'd act like this around is a decidedly single-digit number.

"Of course lethal!" Camanion cries, "We're dealing with the big leagues of Bastard Operatism! Never use a weapon that won't at least hurt the target pretty bad," At this she starts to play with her Ethernet whip, "But before we start coding, I've got a bit of maintenance to do on one of the borderline end-of-life servers. Be back in a tick!"

 **Sorry this took me so long to get up. School's been a bit crazy. Hopefully I'll be able to get the next chapter of Fusion up soon, but don't count on it being this week. Cross Country season ending certainly can't hurt though. I may actually be able to finish my homework sometime** _ **before**_ **ten every now and then.**


	16. 2016-15 (2010-12)

**2016-15 (2010-12) Impromptu Dismissals**

"I'm pretty sure you don't work for the company," we say as Ada clatters mindlessly on the keyboard. We don't bother with typing, we just block input from the keys and insert our input straight into the controller board. To keep the illusion up, we have Ada type randomly to keep the casual observer from discovering this.

 **Cmd fire. bat Josh Berry**

"So what's up?" The Bastard asks, wandering over. We reach over and tap the mute button on the phone while the bloke on the other end has some form of protracted verbal seizure.

"You know that idiot beancounter-"

"The word Beancounter makes the word idiot redundant in that sentence."

"-who wanted us to pay for his home broadband 'because I work from home'?"

"Yeah…?"

"Well, he got a note from his boss authorizing it."

"So you told him to get stuffed."

"Sure, and then he got his boss on the line."

"And you told him to get stuffed too, right?"

"Yep, and then he got _his_ boss on the line."

"And I assume you told him to get stuffed."

"Yes, and then he got _our_ Boss on the line."

"And you definitely told him to get stuffed."

"Of course, and then he started rabbiting on about how if we didn't get our act together we wouldn't be working for the company much longer."

"Which is where I came in. So what've you done, deleted his info from HR, Salaries, the website, Active Directory so he can't log in, the Security database, updated his swipe card to read Stolen and deleted him from the phone database?"

"All except the phones, it would drop the call. But just in case he has some Domain-fu his computer has some emergency 'maintenance' in about ten seconds." We gesture towards the comms closet, which is missing the etherkiller from the door, though this unit's been slightly modified s that the user plugs in a cable instead of plugging it into a port. No need to blow out everything on the switch just to hit one machine, so the PFY is plugging the Boss's RJ-45 into the killer. Camanion calls it a 'Surgical Etherkiller."

"Nice, but no time like the present!" The Bastard says happily. We obligingly tap some new commands into the phone control software and the call details revert to UNKNOWN before the call drops.

After a moment we hear the beeping of a swipe card being repeatedly denied at the entrance to Mission Control. We start to wave our hand towards the door while making a certain universally recognized symbol of dislike. The Boss starts hammering on the door, but gives up after a moment.

"Wait for it…" The Bastard murmurs.

The phone rings. Caller ID says it's the bloke from the office next to the Boss.

"WHAT THE BLODY HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SWIPE CARD!" The Boss screams, with the tell-tale echo f hands free mode.

 _Looks like your Boss is trying to make an example of someone,_ a voice in our head says. We're not crazy, it's just Risa on our internal comm.

 _That makes two of us,_ "Who is this?"

"YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHO THIS IS, AND IF YOU DON'T ENABLE MY SWIPE CARD IMMEDIATELY…"

"I'm sorry, I don't recognize you."

"You won't recgnize me from the unemployment line," the Boss snarls.

I don't know who you are or where you're ringing from,"

"I'm calling from Dave's office.

"Dave?"

"Dave Greenwood –"

"Uh…" [clickety-click] "There's no Dave Greenwood working for this company." The call drops.

"Ooh, don't forget their scanned employment contracts – and their home directories – from the SAN!" the PFY says, returning from the Comms closet after a loud bang from the Boss's office.

"Got it" [ring] "Sharon who now?" [clickety]

And now it's starting to dawn on the masses that this is serious. Considering the laziness of the HR people, even if the ex-staff member can prove their dismissal was some sort of data error, they probably won't get paid for at least two months and bills, mortgages, etc. won't be paid.

Several doors slam from the IT staff trying to protect their pay packets from the Boss's minus touch.

"Hey Steven, go get the master key. I'll get a bin and a Zippo," we say.

Ten minutes later we're making a run up to the stripy shirt brigade with the PFY and listening to Mission Control through the switchboard.

"You can't possibly be serious," the head of HR says smugly from a hands-free phone in the security office.

"I'm sorry, this is Simon, Ada is out of the office."

"You can't really think that you can delete someone from the database and the cmpany will treat them as persona non grata!"

"I'm pretty sure that our HR system is a pretty authoritative indicator of who is and isn't a a staff member and the head of HR will agree once I talk to him."

"You're talking to him…."

"No, I'm talking to someone at Security, I'm sure Dave, the real head of HR will agree."

"Dave's the assist-"

"That's not what the HR database is saying."

There's nothing like the sound of a penny dropping from a high altitude. Especially one with someone who jealously craves your job on the opposite face. Downside of a powerful job, there's always a queue of people behind you, all patiently holding their knives…

You'll never get away with it! I've got printed documents! My signed contract, my health insurance, my annual leave forms!"

"Yes… Health insurance, forgot about that [clickety] Printed documents do have an air of authority… Unless you kept them in the bottom of the desk in the locked drawer you'd get if you were, in fact, employed at the company. The drawer that has one master key, one which my assistant will have in his pocket as the other one starts that small bin fire on the top of the roof. Now I need to ring and call Security abut the impostors in the building, they've been waiting for a chance to see how the dogs react."

Up on the roof, we flick a Zippo, light a piece of paper on fire and toss it into a rubbish bin full of paper. Howler wanders closer and jumps back with a yelp after touching his nose to the flame. We sigh and get a tube of burn cream out of Hammerspace.

 **Okay, so I know I will have a chapter of Fusion up Saturday, so that's great. I'll see you then!**


	17. 2016-16 (2010-13)

**2016-16 (2010-13) An odd use of a GPS**

Isn't it always just when you're doing something that requires a lot of your concentration when some idiot rolls in with an inane problem that *just* *can't* *wait?*

Like now when this idiot from Beancounter Central shows up while the three of us are slowly drilling a hole in a crate to see if there's something in there we wouldn't like rolling around Mission Control.

"My desktop background isn't woking!" he cries hysterically, "It used to but now it doesn't!"

"What was it?" The PFY asks, turning the bit on the hand drill very, very slowly.

"It was a still from the new Hunger Games!"

"Which series? The first three or the second three?" We ask, feigning interest.

"There is no second three!"

"There isn't?" we ask in a tone calculated t make the luser doubt his sanity, "It's the series where Catnis and Gale bring their kids up at the Capitol."

"Catnis marries Pita and mved to District 12!"

"No, that's a dream sequence form when Catnis doesn't kill Coin. In fact Pita is killed at the beginning of the fourth book."

"By a pack of muttations?"

"Na, Gale by accident. Pita goes out into the woods and Gale mistakes him for a deer. Cmplete accident."

"You're lying!"

"Completely true," the PFY speaks up, "I've got a mate who does typesetting for the editor's preview editions of books. He told me about it -and he's even sent me the whole preview set."

"Where?" the user gasps excitedly.

"In this crate, just give us a sec to get a crowbar so we can get them out for you," we make tracks out f the room before the user can ask why we were using a drilll and didn't get a crowbar to begin with. A few seconds later we hear creaking wod as he attempts to impatiently open the box with his bare hands…

…

"Railgun powered Shuriken launcher," the Bastard comments, carefully prodding the robot at the bottom of the stairs a few minutes and a loud crash later, "Interesting."

"Not as interesting as this," we add, telekinetically removing several screws in the bot's lid – a good test of fine motor skills – and remove a battery powered camera from below the main boards. "This baby was timed to start as son as they activated the bot."

…Moments later back in Mission Control…

"So they activated it in an empty carpark building," the Bastard comments thoughtfully, "Sneaky."

"And see how they used the armored window in the stairwell door to see what happens when they pushed out a store dummy on a wheelie chair?" We add.

"Fascinating, this calls for some serious thinking. Get me some lager!" The PFY announces. We head into the server rom to get a six pack of Newky from under the output of one f the older machines with an especially hefty fan.

…One day later…

"So Ada, what have you come up with?" the PFY asks expectantly.

"A master plan! Took us and our sisters several hours to plan out all the details," and get the digitizer blueprints, "Upon activation the bot does… Nothing!"

"Nothing?"

"Yep, and when it notices a person come up to it – we programmed it so that it can tell a real human from a dummy – it starts puncturing these."

"Cans of… cheap… pepper spray." The PFY comments incredulously.

"Yeah, whadya think?"

"It's a bit…"

"Crap?" We suggest

"Yeah."

"Exactly, you'll note that the cans are of a cheap Eastern European brand and are liable to fall out f the robot's grasp the moment they are punctured. In terms f attack value it's next to worthless. But as we know,and you would if you'd bothered to keep watching, the robot will be taken back to their mobile office in the back of a van for some 're-engineering'."

"AND IT'LL REACTIVATE WHEN IT GETS TO THIR MAIN OFFICE BECAUSE YOU ACTIVATED THE INBUILT GPS!"

"Precisely…"

"I knew…"

"Precisely what it's not going to do. The GPS is on and it is key t the plan, but it's not triggered by locational information."

"Not triggered by location…"the PFY muses, knowing he's going to be paying for drinks tomorrow if he can't figure it out, "Elevation?"

"Nope!" we say happily, thinking happy free lager thoughts. Normally we wouldn't drink the stuff – it has no effect on us whatsoever, but we will this once to capitalize on the PFY's 'generosity.'

…

"BLOODY BLACKWALL TUNNEL!" The PFY growls disgustedly as he hands over a fistful of notes in response to my request for more f the expensive hand-crafted lager we've recently became accustomed to.

"Yep! Nothing like the absence of all GPS signals t alert the robot to the fact that a vanload of robogeeks – in a confined space- has entered a busy road tunnel with no safe means of escape."

"Which…" The Bastard starts, finishing his first beer of the afternoon "… is when the non-Eastern European tear gas canister came in." The PFY passes some more cash to the barman in response to his gesture fr some f the same lager we're drinking.


	18. 2016-17 (2010-14)

**2016-17 (2010-14)**

"You make it sound s.. Nasty," the PFY comments in response to the Boss's latest brainwave.

"Trying to maim a supplier's employees just because you don't like their product?" the Boss asks, flipping through a pile of complaints.

"THEY STARTED IT!" We cry.

"How?"

"They sent us their product!"

"And so you've been mutating their product int malicious objects and sending it back to them."

"They're not malicious! They'd have t be capable f malice t be malicious," the PFY argues. We suppress a snort. We've met one malicious robot in our travels. It didn't survive the encounter.

"But wouldn't it be good if they were?" The Bastard asks rhetorically, "But in any case, the robots were simply performing a task, which in combination with their current attachment, caused a problem."

"Huh?" The Boss asks, stretching his vocabulary t the limit.

"Well, if you had a cleaning robot with a polisher attachment. Were that attachment to be sandpaper, the result would be significantly… Different."

"Huh?" The Boss repeats.

"Meaning it's a logic error of some sort. Any sane programmer would check for sandpaper instead of a polishing mop.

"Or a 150mm, 72 tooth milling cutter, spinning at 2500 RPM. For instance," the PFY adds.

"This has to stop. They were threatening legal action after that accident in the tunnel."

"Accident? It's just irresponsible to build a robot with a teargas canister!" The PFY protests

"They say they didn't!"

"Just like they didn't build it with a sonic cannon," the Bastard intervenes, "But we know they did because their windows disintegrated yesterday." We feel a glow of pride at this, and the exclamations of ur sisters in our head indicate that they feel the same, the three of us having been the ones who designed and produced the sonic cannon in question.

"They say you did that too!"

"How could we?" we ask, "We're software people!"

"They say they're the victims of a systematic campaign of violence and that you're the perpetrators," the Boss says, warming to the topic.

"THEY'RE THE VICTIMS!" We say incredulously, "Have you forgotten the chainsaw incident? The Shuriken attack? Yesterday's attempt to burn down our offices?"

"They say that was the grease in the bearings spontaneously combusting after heavy use."

"Yes, and by heavy use they mean when it went berserk in the office and started bouncing off walls. And that the bearings were 'greased' with abut a gallon f HIGH-PERFORMANCE AVIATION FUEL! I don't even know how they got it!" We shout, starting softly and building to a roar.

"They say grease loss is common in some types of bearings, though they assure me they'll use different bearings in future models. They even pointed me to a few websites that discuss the issue at length."

"You can find websites that discuss any issue at length," the Bastard points out, "That doesn't mean that they are in any way true."

"Like the We-Love-OpenSUSE-Linux fan site," the PFY comments.

" _Actually, I quite agree with him on that one,"_ Risa interrupts, thougho nly we can hear her, _"I never did like the RPM package system."_

" _Shut up,"_ "Or the TV-Will-Survive-VR site," we throw in.

"Or the Half-Life-Is-Coming site," the Bastard points out

"No, that one's true!" the PFY exclaims.

"I hope so…"

"IN ANY CASE,: the Boss interjects, "The company has agreed to take back the unit with the lubrication problems,refund us, and iron out the bugs a bit."

"Oh, I already ironed out most of them this morning," we comment.

"Yes," the PFY says dryly, "It was a 1 iron wasn't it?"

"I started with a 1 but switched to a 2 when the handle broke. There was a tricky shot halfway down the stairwell, but I managed it with a sand wedge."

"I'm a wood man myself, just ask the ladies," the Bastard adds, sleaze mode on.

"I…" The Boss says, mental wheels spinning in the sand, "…they want the machine back."

"It's at the bottom f the stairwell," we comment, "But we suppose we can get it this afternoon,"

 *****LATER THAT DAY*****

*CRASH* "Ow! You dropped it on my foot!"

"It's not my fault! Ada, contrl yur dog!"

"Sorry, come over here Howler,"

***A FEW MINUTES LATER***

"Well, here it is, goodish as newish."

"?"

"The covers were a little dented," we gesture towards our rather sparse set f golf clubs, "So we had to bang out some new plates out of some scrap metal we had lying around – but apart from that it's exactly the same as it was when it came to us." _Including the denial bearings and erratic flight program._

"Good, there's a courier here now to take it."

***TEN MINUTES LATER***

"...It was brilliant!" The PFY complains, "We could have programed it with image recognition so that it would hunt down geeks and leave normal people alone!"

"Yes," the Bastard responds, "But you know they'll be x-raying it for new parts and checksumming the ROM before powering it up."

"Actually, they aren't even bothering with the carpark building anymore." We state, having long since gotten access to the traffic cameras between here and the bot company through means that would get a human five to ten in the US.

Our conversation is interrupted by the prompt arrival f theBoss. "Have yu heard? The Bt Company just had a fire."

"A QUICK BET," we announce, "N WHAT TYPE F FIRE IT WAS, LOSER BUYS DRINKS."

"DESIEL OIL LUBRICANT FIRE by any chance?" The PFY asks.

"That started it, but that wouldn't have caused a fire the size I'm looking at, so no." We respond, turning to the Boss, "You want in? Loser buys dinner?"

"FLAMETHROWER!" The Boss shuts, caught up in the excitement.

"Survey says no," turning to the Bastard, "Yu want in to? Lser buys cab fare hme?"

"Magnesium plate fire?"

"DAMN IT!"

***A FEW MINUTES LATER, AT THE PUB***

"And we just happened t have some 1 mm magnesium plate lying around the office, did we?" The PFY asks, dragging four pints over to our table.

" _It surprised me too,"_ Camanion's vice emerges from a phone on the table, _"Though considering my sister's resourcefulness, it really shouldn't have."_

" _And who could have known,"_ Risa adds from the same phone, _"That once that stuff gets going, the rivets holding the plates together melt like butter, leaving blobs f white hot metal in the wake f a robot programmed to bounce off walls erratically…"_


	19. 2016-18 (2010-15)

**So now we get to what I call a "screenplay episode." There's about three of these and it's an interesting way to write. Not something I'd do very often, but it's a nice idea.**

 **EDIT: did a bit of formatting correction and sorted a couple of contradictory statements. Converted one typo into a bit of a joke.  
**

 **2016-18 (2012-15) Bot Wars IV**

 **POV: Screenplay**

BOT WARS IV

[Black Screen]

Several lines of multicolored static block the screen before the words

 **Initial Tests Indicate  
Unit OK**

Appear in tasteless block letters. Another burst of static crowds out the screen before a camera view with the upside-down faces of the PFY and Ada.

Stephen: That's got it!

Ada: Don't be so excited.

Cut to a large shared office space. The walls are adorned with flat panel monitors showing everything from network alerts, a view f the corridor outside the rm, outside weather conditions, and a countdown to happy hour at the local pub. Two men and one woman stand near two small robots, one powering up.

Simon: Not going to work…

Stephen:It is! I've rebuilt the OS from the ground up. They've got complete building maps including power and network jack locations, coffee and vending machines…

Ada: Still not going to work…

Stephen: They know how to plug themselves in to charge when the battery's low…

Ada: Still not going to work…

Stephen: They've got high-torque drive motors, GPS location, works even inside the building, full 360 degree camera, now with vertical, and new, and vastly improved advanced neural learning AI…

Simon: Starting to sound like Terminator

Stephen (excitedly): It knows about that!

Simon: It knows abut what?

Stephen: Terminator! See, to make the AI more aware, I showed it all it's previous mistakes, the stairwells, the lift shafts, and so on. Then I showed it RoboCop and all the Terminators except Salvation and Genesys. And I loaded the Defender MAME ROM, for the noises

Ada: Defender? Ikaruga's better, but it's still not going to work…

Stephen: It will! The AI is state-of-the-art and the processor is a 12-core. And I couldn't fit an Ikaruga ROM into the memory.

Simon: Still not going to work.

Stephen: I'm telling you, it will! The AI is state of the art and the processor is a twelve core! Twelve PHYSICAL cores!

Ada: Still not going to work. Watch.

Stephen: Watch what? Hey look! The code's just reverted!

Ada: _shudders involuntarily_ For some reason, using "Code" and "Revert" in the same sentence gives me the chills. But yeah, it did that to me yesterday when I tried to amek it do deliveries. You only get a few minutes before it boots a backup ROM.

As Ada and the PFY speak, several lights flash on the robot's panel and the words "Booting Alternative ROM" appear on the robot's LED display. An amber lamp next to the display starts glowing.

Simon: Yeah, I tried to make it assist us during a client liaison meeting. You can restart it, but that only gives you a few more minutes. I think the bot company did it so the units could only be used "for good."

Ada: _thoughtfully_ That being said… we could probably… clip the VCC pin of the backup ROM… Then it wouldn't be able to boot from it!

Stephen: So which chip is the backup ROM?

Simon: _dryly_ You mean which of the 30 unlabeled and seemingly identical chips is the backup ROM? No idea- but I bet we cann find out with a soldering iron.

Stephen: Ah, de-solder the VCC ppin of each chip until the watchdog circuit fails to reboot?

Simon: I was going to say just disable the chip, but we can go with your idea.

Stephen: Nah, I'm out of desoldering braid.

Ada: _Wordlessly tosses over a coil of resin-coated copper wire_

Stephen: Where did you get that? _At Ada's wordless stare_ Right, not my problem, don't ask questions.

 **Scene Cut**

The inside of a robot's top cover. A mass of closely positioned chips with identification rubbed out are crammed onto the motherboard. A female hand touches the chips one by one, flickering blue at the fingertip with each touch.

Ada: _muttering to self_ Okay, here we go…

A soldering iron and string of desoldering braid are maneuvered to a pin attached to the identified chip. The braid is placed on the pin and touched atby the iron. It rests for a second before being slowly pushed to the side and removed.

Cut to front panel of robot. The amber light disappears before the words TARGETS ACQUIRED flashes on the display, unnoticed by the observers. Ada removes the soldering equipment and closes the lid with four screws. She sits back and brushes a stray bit of hair out of her eyes before cutting off the end of the braid and tossing it into the bin.

Cut to Mission Control a few minutes later. Ada, Simon, and Stephen are all perched on desks. The door to Mission Control now has a robot-shaped hole next to an RFID authorized dog door.

Simon: High torque drive motors eh?

Stephen: Yeah…

Cut to robot's eye view. The robot pushes a door open to reveal a stairwell. A circling arrow with the word RECALCULATING appears. The robot traverses, turns, and heads towards the closed door of a lift. It emits a high-frequency chirp and the door opens. The robot waits patiently for the lift to arrive before entering and heading to the basement.

Cut to CCTV camera. The robot emerges from lift in the basement and rolls over to a locked supply closet. It stops and pans through 360 degrees, pausing to look at the camera.

 _Voiceover_ Stephen: You think it knows we're watching?

Simon: You're the one who gave it the building maps, you tell us.

Stephen: Yeah, it knows… BIT of a design flaw that.

The robot crashes through the door to the closet and emerges a moment later in a blur of motion, carrying something. The lift doors close silently behind it. A new window is moved in front of the camera view, displaying the lift control panel. The bar indicating the lift location scrolls upward.

Ada: Anyone know what it was carrying?

Simon: No idea. I've been meaning to upgrade the CCTV system with a better framerate, but not even stills can tell me what it was holding.

Stephen: B2… B1… Ground… First… Second… Second!

Cut to robot's eye view. The robot emerges from the lift and goes up to a wall outlet. A circular saw is pulled forward and plugged into the outlet.

Stephen: _muffled by distance_ Where the hell did it get a saw? I thought we put them all in the tape safes!

The saw growls to life. The robot rotates, bringing the door of Mission Control into view. The hindquarters of a terrified dog can be seen barreling through the dog door. The robot accelerates towards the door with the robot-shaped hole, saw at the ready. The spike end of a fire axe comes towards the robot, even quicker.

Cut to Mission Control

Ada stands in the middle of the room. Simon and Stephen are perched on desks once again. Ada's arms glow with blue circuits, rapidly fading. The green-white telekinetic aura fades significantly slower.

Ada: _To Stephen_ So maybe the next time you fudge a ROM you'll build in a bit of a failsafe? We're getting tired of saving your sorry hide from your own screw-ups.

Stephen: Yeah, but you're good at it – _His head flashes green and bounces off the wall behind him_

Simon: Okay.. No harm done… _hopefully_ and still time for a quick pub trip?

Cut to pub. Simon hands the barman a shiny new note and is rewarded with a pint of strong lager.

Cut to Robot's eye view

 **RAM OK**

 **ROM O…**

 **booting**

 **NOW I'VE GOT AN AXE**

Cut to Mission Control an hour later. The three BOFHs reenter to find the robot gone and the PFYs screen with a text editor ocntaining a single line

 **NOW i'VE GOT AN AXE, HO HO HO!**

Simon: You didn't happen to show it Die Hard did you?

Stephen: Yeah, bit of a design flaw.

Simon: To the batstairs Robin!

Ada: _Gives Simon an almost scandalized look_ But first…

She takes a picture of the dormant robot and prints it in color before holding it in front of the robots camera eye and collecting a soldering iron and some braid.

Ada: You know what they say, send a thief… Now! To the stairwell!

Cut to… the landing of stairwell half an hour later. The three stand, guarded by two axe-wielding robots at the top and bottom of the stairs.

Simon: So which one's which?

Ada: My plan was to go for the one without the axe hole in the top… but they both have them.

Stephen: That would be the advanced neural AI.

Simon: _dripping sarcasm_ Another… design flaw?

Stephen: Well, everybody sees with 20/20 hindsight.

Ada: _Irritated glance_ And I'm not helping you out of this one. Your p- mess, your problem.


	20. 2016-19 (2010-16)

**2010-19 (2010-16)**

 **POV: BOFH**

I love these quiet moments before storms.

Well, technically it's between storms, but that's beside the point. During these moments I find myself slipping into a dreamlike state where I'm blowing creatures away in Half Life 3 while listening to the next Hollywood Undead album.

Quiet… Calm… Musical…

"WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?"

Aaannd back to reality.

So the PFY, Composite, and I are trapped on a landing between floors guarded by a pair of mutant axe-wielding robots. Actually I'm pretty sure Composite is just sticking around to watch us squirm, but I digress. To make matters worse, the Boss has somehow managed to stumble to the same landing as us without being turned into rough-cut schnitzel. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the briefcase containing his plans for slashing the IT budget. Tragic.

It's not looking good. It's much better being trapped in a stairwell over the weekend by two vicious axe-wielding robots when you don't have the Boss and his tales of a five year plan to build an eighth scale replica of Sterling's Victoria locomotive for company.

"What I don't understand is how the second robot went banannas," the PFY asks to noone in particular.

"Well," Composite, who has returned to their normal form somewhere during the proceedings, leans against the wall and crosses their arms over their chest – this isn't going to end well – responds to the PFY's question, "Your faulty AI taught the first one to make other mutants like itself – you know, like werewolves, Candy Crush clones, and Call of Duty players. Now if you'd gone with the AI _we_ wanted to use we wouldn't be having this conversation now would we?"

"Yes, an AI which would try and join us in Bastardom, eventually pushing us out of our jobs of user service and performance delivery."

"And we have two swords, a Disk, a shotgun, a Redeemer… Well, we've got a large arsenal that says it wouldn't."

"… Yeah, designing the AI like that was a bit of a d-"

"DON'T say design flaw!" I snap, a little jaded by that particular excuse. "A design flaw is removing shielding between the engine and cabin of a consumer vehicle. Designing a robot who's ultimate goal is to become so smart it tries to kill you is somehting different!" Composite raises an eyebrow in a "You talkn' 'bout me?" fashion.

"Design-?" the Boss gasps.

"I..." the PFY starts.

"No, no," Composite states, still leaned up on the wall, "Reprisal isn't going to help. We're trapped on a stairwell with no good means of escape. There are two robots guarding the top and bottom. We need a plan."

"...Who the hell are you?" the Boss asks as if he's just noticed the power-suited fox – which isn't too unbelievable considering his mental capacity, which is slightly higher than a wet tissue.

"Isn't there something you can do with all your powers?" the PFY asks.

"Hell. No." Composite responds angrily, "I've been getting you out of scrapes the whole time. _We_ provided you with the brace and bit to drill the inspection hole during the railgun attack. _We_ were the one who hit the robot with a pinch when the bot company greased it with diesel. _We_ were the one who heard the chainsaw during the first attack. _We_ provided you with an AI that wouldn't be having this problem but NOOO, YOU had to design your own and LOOK WHERE THAT GOT US. Now hows about you GET OFF YOUR ARSE and GET YOUR OWN GODDAMN PLAN!"

"...You done yet?" I ask after about a solid minute.

"...Yes, I'm done," they answer after a deep breath. Surprising how that works for a creature that doesn't even need to breathe. "In all honesty, there's about a dozen ways we could get out, some of which would even help you, but I'm gonna sit this one out and let you fix your own f*ck up."

"...Okay. So what do we have… My cell phone is flat," the PFY starts.

"And mine's on my desk. The Boss's-" I start.

"-My name's Dave."

"-Dave's is in several pieces," I gesture towards the top of the stairwell where the remains of the Boss's briefcase lie, "The overvoltage cattleprod has suffered some form of internal mentdown and the pinch is fully discharged, so we can't EMP the bots."

"The building master power control isn't working, for what it's worth," the PFY adds, pressing a button on his keychain, "And Composite here clearly isn't going to be helping anyone anytime soon." Composite's circuits are pulsing dangerously and they're clenching and unclenching their fist in an I'm-about-to-call-in-the-shotgun manner.

"So we're going to have to MacGuyver up a solution. What _do_ we have?"

"Uh… I've got the fried cattleprod," the PFY says.

"And I've got a dead pinch," I say.

"Let's see… I have a credit card torch/knife combo, a disposable lighter, and two asprin." the Boss says

"And I have a discharged pinch. Do you happen to have anything Composite?"

Composite simply gives a scream of rage and disappears in a swirl of energy,, hopefully to go kill something for a few hours and calm down.

"What the hell is she?" the Boss asks.

"We're not entirely certain..." the PFY says, "Besides that she's normally Ada, you know, pretty mild mannered in a bastardish sort of way. I've never seen her explode that way."

"… So we're all agreed that if we are going to get out of this we're going to have to make individual sacrifices?" I ask.

"Okay." the Boss says.

"Let's do this," the PFY adds.

*push*

Several minutes, one trip down a stairwell, several sturdy blows with an axe, and an ambulance later we're free and the Boss is off to hospital, though his injuries do look pretty nasty. Wonderful. We'll have to go looking for a new Boss once again.

Several hours after that, Ada returns, much calmer.

"Not sure what came over us back there. Sorry about leaving you trapped in there. Did we miss anything?"

"Just another Boss having a tragic accident from which he won't recover from. And don't worry, I did deserve that."

 **Wow… I can quite honestly say I wasn't planning for Composite's outburst. Not really sure where that came from, but I do think it was better than what my original plan was. Anyway, happy holidays to all of my readers. I'll see you tomorrow with a special episode.**


	21. 2016-20 (2010-18)

**2016-20 (2010-18) The Holiday Games**

"What?!" the PFY exclaims, "We aren't invited to any parties?"

"No," the Boss responds, "The rest of the department is, but you won't be going ot any departmental Christmas parties this year."

"But we always go to Christmas parties! We get things going and keep the momentum up! We get the party happening!"

"Yes… that's the problem. Apparently your party games aren't generally well received."

"WHO DOESN'T LOVE THEM?"

"Usually the victim."

"The victim?"

"Yes. The target of Pin the Cattleprod on the Board Member for instance."

"It was dark," the PFY responds, "And the player mistook a cattleprod for a self-adhesive tail."

"It's an easy mistake to make," the Bastard adds dangerously, "Many's the time I've picked up a cattleprod thinking it was a lint remover while grooming your predecessors before an important meeting about slashing the IT budget."

"And anyway," we pick up, "Tjhat was only one game, and only the beancounter's department."

"Yes, I heard about the subsequent game of Pin the Blame on the Accountant. I heard he thought he was playing some variant on Laser Strike."

"I think he'd been drinking," the PFY says, turning to his keyboard, _Speaking of which, anyone got the little "addition" for the non-alcoholic punch?_

"Or what about the Pinata disaster in HR a few years ago? And don't think I don't notice you insulting me over the IM system."

"We aren't insulting you, and it was just a couple of games that met with tragic consequences. The winner of the blindfold wheelie chair race rolled into the circle right after the cricket bats were passed out."

"He says he wad duct-taped into the chair!"

"That's just the concussion talking."

"So it was an accident?"

"Yes."

"Like the toaster in the punch bowl?"

"A warning to us all about placing an electrical appliance next to a large bowl of liquid."

"P.R. says you brought the toaster with you!" the Boss counters the PFY's argument

"Of course!" the Bastard butts in, "d'oeuvres are undercooked – and with the fish fillings it's a good idea to ensure they're cooked through. No one expected the toaster to fall off the Lazy Susan."

"Except the Deputy Head of HR who was wearing rubber gloves and standing on a rubber mat when the Director dipped in the ladle?"

"And if you look at the end of year financial transactions it may seem that there's some form of service being offered to departments with unpopular people. Th emoney gets sent to you but no IT items turn up at their offices."

'That's the problem with a December 31 close off date. They give us the money but the kit doesn't show up in time. If it doesn't get receipted in this calendar year, so it ends up coming off of next year's budget."

The Boss wisely decides not to inquire further about what happens to the money, shuffling papers so that he can read what his next topic is, short term memory not being his strong suit.

"Actually, there isn't a Christmas party at all, to prevent 'incidents.' In lieu of the cost we're giving out bonuses instead."

"Well," the PFY says, disappointment vanishing faster than chocolates at a Weight Watchers weigh-in, "Everyone likes a nice little cash bonus."

"Well, it's not exactly cash. To foster keeping money in the company we're issuing the bonus in meal vouchers."

"B-Bu… But the meals are free!" the Bastard stammers, gobsmacked.

"Not as of next year… Unless you're above 5.8 paygrade at least."

***A FEW HOURS LATER***

We glance around the darkened carpark basement to review our troops. Two dozen 5.8 and unders, all armed to the teeth wearing a variety of night vision goggles. We push down Ada's trifocal "Trident" goggles and set for EM. We glance towards the elevator and watch the car float down. A burst of radio emerges from the lift and a car unlocks.

"Sounds like we've got us a smart one," we murmur to the PFY.

"Ssshhh..." the Bastard shushes, "Situation report?"

We switch our Tridents to IR. "Okay, looks like about a dozen human heat sources. Elevator control panel says they're coming nonstop from the sixth floor," We speak up a little louder and announce "Showtime."

Two dozen magazines are slammed into receivers and two dozen charging handles are yanked back. Two dozen safeties click off. "On my mark..." We flip our goggles to Night Vision and aim towards the elevator.

The lift slides past B1 and stops at B2. The doors grind open. "Group One! Mark!" A dozen fingers pull back on a dozen triggers, releasing several dozen rounds per second. "Group One, Reload! Group Two, Fire!" A dozen magazenes are ejected from a dozen rifles and new ones are loaded while the second dozen keep up the fire.

In retrospect this was the best Christmas party in company history. Two dozen peons with fully automatic paintball guns pelting a lift full of managers with half-frozen paintballs. And security apparently noticed nothing.

Must have been a power glitch.

 **Happy Holidays to you all, no matter which one you celebrate. Even if you don't at all, have a good last week of December and everyone have a great new year!**

 **I'm not going to post in Decom Admin for a while so I can focus on Fusion, I'll see you when I get done with Sector 4!**


	22. 2017-1 (2005-19)

**So I'm making this one to explain a comment Composite made in Fusion Sector 2 when Samus asks what happened to their X-ray equipment, and later referenced in Convergence Chapter 1.**

 **And apparently Halon has a different impact on humans in the BOFH's world than it does in the real world. From what I've read, halon's pretty safe to inhale, though it's not something you'd especially want to try.**

 **2017-1 (2005-19)**

Paramedics run around the computer room like ants, attempting to revive three people. A small briefcase-like box sits in the corner near a group of discarded servers. A few lights flicker on the outside.

* * *

 **EMERGENCY RECOVERY MODE ACTIVATED  
LOADING…  
[26/1/2017 13:03:04 GMT] ANALYZING SYSTEM STATUS  
[26/1/2017 13:03:04 GMT] LIFE SUPPORT DIAGNOSTIC INITIATING  
[26/1/2017 13:03:06 GMT] LIFE SUPPORT REPORT:  
[26/1/2017 13:03:06 GMT] HEART RATE: SLIGHT ELEVATION  
[26/1/2017 13:03:06 GMT] BRAIN WAVE: GOOD  
[26/1/2017 13:03:06 GMT] RESPIRATION: GOOD  
[26/1/2017 13:03:06 GMT] CYBERNETICS: GOOD  
[26/1/2017 13:03:06 GMT] NO RADIATION DAMAGE DETECTED  
[26/1/2017 13:03:06 GMT] POSSIBLE MINOR MEMORY DAMAGE  
[26/1/2017 13:03:07 GMT] LOADING LOG FORMATTING DAEMONS  
[26/1/2017 13:03:10 GMT] Log formatting is good  
[26/1/2017 13:03:10 GMT] Loading hardware diagnostics...  
[26/1/2017 13:03:15 GMT] RAM is good  
[26/1/2017 13:03:15 GMT] Processing is good  
[26/1/2017 13:03:15 GMT] Storage is good  
[26/1/2017 13:03:15 GMT] Life Support systems are good  
[26/1/2017 13:03:15 GMT] Sensory systems have sustained minor damage  
[26/1/2017 13:03:15 GMT] Attack systems are good  
[26/1/2017 13:03:15 GMT] Defense systems are good  
[26/1/2017 13:03:15 GMT] Motor systems are good  
[26/1/2017 13:03:16 GMT] Fusion systems scan initiated…  
[26/1/2017 13:03:23 GMT] Mental fusion is holding  
[26/1/2017 13:03:30 GMT] Anti-tampering systems fully online  
[26/1/2017 13:03:31 GMT] Physical fusion offline  
[26/1/2017 13:03:32 GMT] Reinitializing…**

The suitcase starts to hum slightly. Red cubes of energy begin to leak from it. The cubes emerge at increasing speed, swirling around with a slight chiming sound. Within about ten seconds the energy starts to take on a distinct humanoid figure. After another ten seconds, the red and blue armored form of Composite has fullly reformed.

 **[26/1/2017 13:26:58 GMT] Physical fusion complete  
[26/1/2017 13:26:58 GMT] Initializing consciousness…**

"Wh- What?" We ask, jolting from our slouched position to sitting upright.

"Whoah, where did you come from?" A paramedic asks, blinking in surprise and probably wondering if he really saw the fading of the energy expended during our emergency transformation into Ada.

"Not important," we wave our hand dismissively and fervently attempt to use what little telepathy we have to make him drop the subject. He does, though we're pretty sure we didn't have anything to do with it.

"Someone set off a halon dump, that's what. We're trying to revive these three people. Surprising that they're the admin, his boss, and his other assistant. Usually it's someone in the beancounter's office who was somehow trapped in here during a fire drill. I don't know how you weren't affected."

 _Actually we were very much so affected,_ we think but don't say. _Now, what did happen…?_ It may just be a phantom memory, but we do seem to remember…

* * *

"IT'S NOT THE BLOODY SAME!" The Bastard cries, "I ordered a PARTICULAR machine in a PARTICULAR configuration so it can do a PARTICULAR task!"

But it IS the same," the Boss responds calmly, "See, it's got the same things in the same amounts."

We sigh and shout back, "No, it's not! You can't replace a good machine with one processor for a crap machine with two much slower processors! The only way that would be the same is fi you're making a f***ing SETI toaster!"

"If I say I want a machine with three hard drives, I don't want one with one large hard drive because I probably wanted the three disks to set up a RAID, and I can't do that with one drive."

The PFY comes in, "I think the problem is that you think the machines are the same,"

"They are," the Boss interjects.

"But you aren't paid to think. If you were, you'd be paid a lot less."

We tag back in before the Boss has a chance to get offended, "In fact, we ordered some replacement mice for the console, but instead we got some four button trackballs. Trackballs which AREN'T EVEN BLOODY SPHERICAL!"

"But the ones you ordered were 30 quid each, these were just 3!"

"THEY DON'T WORK!"

"But we saved money!"

"YOU DON'T SAVE MONEY IF IT'S DODGY!"

The PFY jumps in, "And just this morning I got this!" He gestures towards a long box on his desk.

"It's… It's a keyboard," The Boss replies in an I'm-going-to-intentinally-state-the-obvious tone.

"YES! A PC keyboard with a VT-220 layout!"

"LK201," we murmur.

"It doesn't have an Escape key! It doesn't have an Alt key! It doesn't have a Windows key! What's the Compose key for?! AND WHAT THE HELL IS ALL THIS SH*T AT THE TOP!"

"It was only five quid!"

"BECAUSE IT'S CRAP!"

"Has this been happening with all our orders?" The Bastard asks.

"Yes… Didn't I tell you about that?" The Boss asks, feigning innocence, "We have an agreement with Stores that if possible we should get an equivalent item that costs less. And the things they get are reputable and not at all… dodgy"

"And the person who decides what an equivalent product is is the same who picks his nose and eats it to save on lunch money?"

"But he's saved us thousands already!"

*sigh*, "So I suppose that the box on my desk won't be the… 'Insulation Tester' I ordered?" We ask, looking at a box on our desk.

"It might, or it might be a perfectly workable substitute!"

…

…

"THIS ISN'T WHAT I ORDERED!" We cry, opening the box to find a metal cube with strange lettering on the side.

"No, it's a 'better' model," the PFY says, "Higher voltage… Unlimited battery life… Made in… Luton. At least I think that's what it says."

"Luton?" The Boss asks, "That's pretty close."

We simply snort as the PFY begins to decipher the instructions.

"So it looks like you start it with this switch… ]Click[ And you insert the safety link here]clink[ ]HUUUUMMMMMMMMMM[ And you control the withdrawal of the carbon rods here… ]Clunk["

"Carbon Rods?" We ask, backing away slowly. The ready light goes from dull to bright red, then to blinding white, then off with a flash, bang, and puff of smoke. The PFY doesn't notice, still engrossed in the directions.

"Still don't think it's a little dodgy?" The Bastard asks.

"And it looks like you activatte it by pressing this button ]Clack[ ]HIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS[" The fire sensors trip and Halon starts dumping at a high rate. The device releases a large crackle of electricity, accompanied by a large EMP wa-

 **Sorry for taking so long. I've actually had this episode ready for a very long time, maybe even January. As for why I haven't uploaded anything since Convergence, that is because I discovered a game called Cosmic Rage. It's a wonderful little game called a Multi User Dungeon or MUD, and the entire game focuses around role playing. If you care enough, you can find Ada Hopper there most days, though I'll be using an alt character whenever I'm posting a mainline story.**

 **I'll be getting back to work on writing more very soon, and I'm going to start writing again soon.**


	23. 2017-2 (2007-20)

**2017-2 (2007-20)**

 **POV: BOFH**

I'm starting to realize how much I depend on my assistants. I can give them instructions, safe in the knowledge that they will be followed to the letter without any questions. But the PFY's on holiday for a few weeks and Ada is… wherever the hell Ada is. She said something about her sister one night before we went to the bar without her and when we got back the next afternoon she and the Metroid were gone. That thing still gives me the creeps. I remember that moment through low-budget _Fanfiction_ flashback effects.

 **Time Cut**

It was a perfectly ordinary day. I was playing a game of Overwatch with the PFY and a few other Bastards against a group of lusers who thought they were fighting enemies that could be killed. Idiots. Without warning, I hear a loud buzzing hum behind me and say, "Hello Ada, what took you so long? I sent you for curry three weeks ago."

I hear a slight chirp behind me and whirl around. Composite is standing in the middle of Mission Control, but she's not alone. A green brain-like creature floats behind her right shoulder. I freeze. I'm not a huge fan of the series, but I know a Metroid when I see one. The PFY has a more violent reaction. He dives out of his chair, scoops a bottle of lagger from the cooler between our desks, and throw it at the creature.

"Stand down!" Composite shouts, sending the bottle into a wall with a flick of their hand. The Metroid rotates slightly, I think it's turning towards them, and chirps questioningly.

"These two jackasses," Composite glares at the two of us, "Are our coworkers. No eating. If you're hungry you can drop down one of the fallers and find some sewer rats." The Metroid turns towards us and squeals happily. "We should make introductions. Simon, Stephen, this is Oyan, our son."

"Uh…" the PFY starts before deciding against making the obvious joke.

 **Return to Present**

Oyan quickly became a valued member of the team, especially once he was given the ability to talk. His ability to turn lusers into dust was a great way to clean up the bodies that flow in the wake of a true Bastard Operator From Hell.

Of course, since neither of my assistants are here, I don't have any way to delegate the run of the mill issues that plague an IT professional on a daily basis.

"What's the shovel for?" The Boss asks as I drag in some essential BOFH equipment.

"Gardening," I say, barely paying attention to him while I look for a certain helldesk ticket.

"And the bag of.. lime?"

"Gardening, good for… composting."

"And the roll of old carpet?"

"Still gardening."

"How do you use an old carpet for gardening?"

I don't even have to think, having used this excuse before, "Flip it upside-down and use it as weed matting."

"Oh… You know, I used to be a pretty good gardener myself…" The Boss starts off on one of those directionless monologues that plague so many members of middle management.

"I need to bugger off for a moment," I say, wandering off towards the bathroom before the Boss can get going off about using fertilizers in small gardens …

…

When I get back it's worse. The Boss is now talking ot the Head of IT about the need to rotate crops to avoid plant illnesses. Wonderful.

"Fascinating as this is," I say, pointing at the screen, "I've got work to do… Now the complainant was… A. Weston."

"We could help!" The Boss says, much to the Head's surprise, "And we could talk about gardening too!"

!

I blame Ada. Had she not left in advancement in… whatever the hell she's doing… then this wouldn't be an issue. A. Weston, whoever the hell he is, would be safely wrapped in carpet in the back of a van and I'd be deleting a complaint about the speed of our data recovery from the helldesk system.

]clickety[]DELETE[

"So what can we help you with?" The Head asks.

"I dunno, can you dig holes?"

"What size?"

"Oh, maybe six feet by two feet by six feet?"

"Like… a grave?" The Boss asks nervously.

"Sort of. I'm using the Deep Cache method of liming."

"Deep cache?" I've never heard of that."

"It's a New Age Bio-Dynamic thing," I explain, "You make a layer of lime, then a layer of compostable material, then a layer of lime. The groundwater distributes the lime as it seeps up while the compost decomposes."

"And what compostable material were you going to use?" The Boss actually seems interested now.

"Oh, just anything that came to hand… Newspapers… Banana peels… A. Weston."

"We're not going to have you helping us with THAT!" The Head exclaims.

"As an alternative, I was considering using three layers. Depending on how many old carpets we have and if the van's being used. You won't be missed, will you?"

"Okay, what's the problem," the Head asks.

"The real problem is that I'm changing tapes as fast as I can and this A. Weston character is still complaining," I grumble.

"Uh… I don't know what we can do," the Head says, beating a hasty retreat out of the area.

A few hours later, Ada and Hunter teleport in, accompanied by a large lavender cat.

"So, who's this," I ask.

 _I am Ruusaan. I assume that you are my_ Buir's _supervisor?_ Apparently the cat's telepathic.

Howler bounds out of the old tape safe, eager to greet the new arrival. Ada uses her power to slow the happy dog slightly. Ruusaan's fur bristles and she asks, _Is this a_ vod?

"No _ad'ika,_ Howler's just a pet."

"What's the shovel, bag of lime, and carpet for?" Hunter asks.

"One of the users, A. Weston called your mother a tosser."

"I'll get the work van!" Ada announces.

See, it's like clockwork.


	24. 2017-3 (1999-10)

**I think Composite's earned this honor.**

 **2017-3 (1999-10) Composite ends their service as a PFY**

Ada steps into a small broom closet at the back of a bar. She crosses her arms over her chest and we revert to Composite. Oyan and Ruusaan blink into existence next to us. All three of us have made some modifications to our appearance. Oyan has changed the wires from his implants to a matte color. Ruu has put several hours into grooming herself until her lavender fur shines and she doesn't have a hair out of place.

We've removed the matte color form our own armor and polished it so that it shines in even the small amount of light leaking in from the rest of the bar and the light of our circuits. Our circuits are a deeper blue than normal. Of course we'd never use this in actual combat, since it's too visible, and we don't normally care about our appearance, but we aren't going to have another chance to play dress-up like this for years, so we've gone all out. Oyan floats above our right shoulder and Ruu stands to the left of us, head held high and tail curved up, the split tips out to the sides. We sharpen our hearing and listen to the Council behind the false wall.

"Simon, where is your PFY?" One of the High Bastards asks.

"Don't worry, she'll be on time. There's still thirty seconds. We told her to show up at six thirty, so she'll show up at six thirty. Not six twenty-nine and fifty-nine seconds, not six thirty and one second, six thirty."

"So, are we going to do this?" Oyan asks.

"There's still twenty seconds," Ruu murmurs, "Be quiet, we don't want them to hear us."

"Who _is_ Ada?" The third High Bastard asks, "I've never met her and you're pretty mysterious about her."

 _You have no idea,_ we think, "T minus five, be ready," We reach out and pull on the inside handle, pushing the door open exactly on time. Energy swirls around us and we float out of the "cloud," six inches off the ground, our children at our side.

"What the hell are you?" The first High Bastard asks, startled.

"We are Composite. Known to you as Ada Hopper, and these are our children, Oyan and Ruusaan. Say hello kids," We respond.

"Hi, I'm Oyan, but you can call me Hunter."

" _I am Ruusaan,"_ Ruu says telepathically.

"Must take after their fathers," the third High Bastard says dryly.

" _May I?"_ Ruu asks.

"Yes."

" _Psybeam!"_ A beam of energy fires from Ruu's forehead gem, impacting the High Bastard firmly between the eyes. He yelps, jerks back, and shakes his head to clear the confusion.

" _Aliit ori'shya tal'din,"_ we say firmly, "Family is more than blood. Now, does anyone else have any more _di'kutla_ comments about our family?"Noting the lack of response, we pull out the chair at the bottom of the table furthest from the Grand Bastard and sit down. Ruu bunches her hindquarters and launches herself onto the table, "Good, then let's begin."

"Who sponsors this Bastard?" The Grand Bastard – Stephen, the former one having had a tragic accident – asks. Overly formal, but rules are rules.

"I do," Simon says.

"And you're sure that her thesis, 'The science of fabrication of Visual Evidence of Coverkers in Compromising Situations for the Purposes of Blackmail is an original work?"

"I am."

The PFY turns to us, "Very well, then all that remains is for you to answer one question from each of the charter members." He thinks for a moment, "For the sake of tradition… You have just landed a lucrative contract, but your company wants you to document your work, obviously in hopes of leeching your hard-earned skills without compensation. What would you do to keep your knowledge – and your contract – in safety?"

So, first the easy one. We smirk internally and respond with his exact words.

"Ah, I would... claim that I was a devout member of the Church of the Unified Principle of Hermitism, and as such, am not permitted to pass on ideas to others."

The PFY smiles at our memory and responds in kind, "I see... based on the premise that your employer can't discriminate on the grounds of religion?"

"Yes."

"There is such a church?"

"Formed it two weeks ago -a registered charity. I donate all my worldly goods and income to it," we complete the conversation appropriately.

"Nice," the first High Bastard says, "But how's this? You find that your Boss has begun to distribute diagrams of the network topology in the interest of BYOD. How would you stop the potential source of cowboy plug-and-pray by the users?"

Another easy one, but we take a minute to think of something more creative then the normal answer. "So… to start we'd set up MAC address filtering on all of the switches…" the High Bastard opens his mouth to protest the simplicity and harmlessness. We flick a finger, telekinetically slapping his mouth shout with a snap. "Next… we'd anonymously send out instructions on how to bypass this to a few of the brighter lusers…" All three High Bastards lurch out of their seats at the mere absurdity before we slap them back down, "Our show, we believe… and third, we'd wait for a few of the users to use these instructions and report them to HR and get them fired for illegal use of network resources. The best part of this plan is that it is both effective _and_ completely legal. And we already have a contract that gets us a bonus if we legally terminate an employee."

The Bastards exchange looks before the first nods, "That is unconventional but it does work. Next question."

Simon nods to the third High Bastard, who nods in response, "Okay, so your helldesk queue is overflowing, the internet is down, and your Boss comes in to see you playing Ghost Recon."

"Well…" we think on this one before deciding to go with a variation on the standard response, "That's simple. Use the apps server to push it out to everyone so we can claim everyone's at it… then patch the Boss's copy to use… a copy that replaces all of the enemies with helpless civilians… and program it to autostart and run a demo whenever anyone enters the room. He'll be out the door so fast we won't be able to see his _shebs_ fur dust."

"That's good," the third High Bastard says, "Now Simon, I think it's your turn."

"So, as a hypothetical," Simon starts, "Say if your mentor had found the stash of money hidden in hat old Pavilion 8570c you use as a footrest, and he had hypothetically spent that large amount of cash, what would you do?"

"Well," we adopt a beatific smile that fools nobody, nor is it meant to, "Say this had happened. We would probably, in fact, _not_ replace it with an appropriate amount from the CO2 fire extinguisher behind the mentor's desk. We would, in fact, use the experience gained while writing our thesis to create an image of our mentor in a… compromising position… with the CEO's wife. We would then proceed to send this image to the head of HR, the head of IT, the CEO, and several major news outlets," we lean forward slightly towards Simon, still with the same innocent dumb blonde smile on our face, "Do we make ourselves clear?"

"Y-yes…" Simon says nervously, "I'm sure that won't be necessary,"And to celebrate your achievement, Bastard Operator from Hell, why don't we go to the—"

KKKKKZZZZZZZEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRTT!

Simon collapses from the little 'enhancement' we made to his briefcase lock while he went for his cattleprod.

"And that, my friends, is why you don't try to f*ck over a Mobian cyborg," our smile widens into a sneer, as we stand, "Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got business to attend to." We wave our tail and leave the room, flickering up to our orbiting spaceship once we enter the broom closet.

"Is she really going to—" one of the High Bastards asks.

"No, probably not," the PFY says, "But on the other hand I've worked with her for six months and I still haven't figured it out."

At this point we go ahead and disconnect the audio bug, job complete.

 **I do love the old 8570c computers, since one of them was my first computer. Maybe it was second-hand and it certainly wasn't a terrific machine (I'm convinced the 20GB hard drive was a retrofit) but that old box has lasted pretty much forever. They sure don't make them like they used to all right.**


	25. 2017-4 (2016-5)

**2017-4: Moving On**

So at last the time has come. Now that we are no longer a PFY, we decide that it is time for us to spread our proverbial wings – literal ones not being our style – and find a new workplace apart from our mentors.

Our phone rings. We glance at the Caller ID (Or rather the nearly impossible to spoof Automatic Number Identification system we replaced it with) and see that it's an outside line. We pick up, and a moment later put it back down.

"User?" Ruusaan asks. Simon and Stephen are out for a few more minutes "fixing" a printer problem – if the crashing sounds we heard a few minutes ago are any indication it's almost sorted – the Espeon is speaking to us audibly.

"Hmm?" we ask, still not having fully switched back on from ignoring the caller.

"A luser, calling you?" Oyan asks.

"Oh, no. Headhunter for a startup looking for a network administrator. We're doing something we saw Simon do once to sweeten the deal."

We pick up the phone in response to a second call and glance to make sure the recorder is off. "Hello," the woman on the other end of the line says, "We must have got cut off. I'm looking for a network administrator for a local start-up."

"So we heard. What does it pay?"

"I… well, they have a very attracti-"

"How much?"

"I can't tell you without an interview."

"Ballpark figure?"

"I can't really..." We hang up on her, slapping the phone down to make no mistake as to what happened.

]RING[

"Say 10,000 more than your current pay," she says before we have the chance to hang p again.

"And you know that because…?"

"I cant..."

]clatter[ ]RING[

"Your boss told me!"

"Now, why would my boss be telling you my salary unless he wants to get rid of me?"

"We're friends from school!"

"We don't buy it," we say, starting to put the phone back down.

"There's a finder's fee!" she gasps out, "You don't even have to take the job, just come to the interview!"

 _The location looks nearly optimal,_ Ruu says telepathically, sending some images from her computer. She doesn't have any augments that allow her to use the computer, but she's good enough with fine control to operate a computer telekinetically. Honestly, we think she may be more powerful than us, certainly more versatile on a telekinetic front. We review the sent data and make our decision.

"Okay. Where do you want to meet?"

* * *

After lunch the next day…

"Okay _ad'ike,_ pack it up, we're moving," we burst into Mission Control. Simon and Stephen jolt upright from their slightly drunken slouches. We hold out our hand in front of our PC, communing with the programs and getting their approval, after a lively debate. Some of the programs decided to stay behind on their familiar network, but our friends all agreed to come. Items of ours begin to swirl around in purple and red auras and Ruu and Oyan begin to pack up.

"What the hell?" Simon asks.

"We're going. Don't try to stop us. It's time for us to move on," we smirk and jab our thumb at Oyan, "That and we want to be gone before you have a chance to teach him any more bad habits."

"Why me?"

 _Because I need no instruction._

"Yeah, you're right," Oyan tries to pack Howler into a cardboard box until the dog squealed and races off. We sigh and give chase.

"But you need to give six weeks notice!" the Boss cries, wandering in.

We make a complex hand weaving motion and say "We did, six weeks ago."

The Boss sighs and begins to wander off, knowing that once again, the sanctity of his inbox has been violated, "Well, I won't bother calling Security to help you with your personals, you clearly have that well in hand."

We transfer some money to the cost center and mark in the Beancounter's database that the computer was properly erased before entering private ownership. Absolute crap, but we aren't going to use the industrial data and reformatting would remove the programs on the machine.

A few hours later, we step into our new home. Having already made orders for networking equipment and cleared our sleeping arrangements with management, we begin to discuss how the place will be furnished.

"This room's empty," Oyan says, looking at a floor plan, "We could knock down that wall and double our space."

 _Or just install a door and use it as dedicated living quarters,_ Ruu suggests.

"Ruus'ika, we do want to mix it up a bit, but we don't really need dedicated quarters. Oy'ika, I like your idea better… Actually no." We gesture at the plans and grab a pencil, "Extend this part out here and here, and we can add in an airlock. Remove these doors or airlock them too and we have a clean room for experimenting.

Ruu drops the pretense of emotionlessness, since it's just her family around, _I like that. We've never had a clean room before. We could do deep repairs with that. Like that time the old Financials database disk had a nasty head crash unexpectedly the day after payday.  
_

Oyan gives a mad scientist cackle and adds "And we could make all sorts of creations!"

 _Shut up._

* * *

"So, there we have it," we clap, glancing around at the new Mission Control.

Ruu curls up in a basket bolted to the floor before stepping back out and purring happily. _It's beautiful._

" _Mesh'la,"_ Oyan agrees, floating over to a resting perch we made with a 3D modeling program and our digitizing laser.

Howler steps out of a crate and sniffs at a pair of automatic food and water bowls before wagging his tail and stepping out through a duplicate of his RFID authorized dog door.

We smile at the reactions and take in the view. It's a science fiction paradise of an office. A trio of desks sit in the middle, currently in a triangle facing in. Electromagnets on the feet of the table and embedded in the floor allow us to lock the desks or hover them above the floor with the flip of a switch. The outside of the room is taken up by more desks, each of which already has all sorts of electronic odds and ends scattered liberally around the surfaces. A side room leads to a restroom with a shower, washer, and dryer in case they're needed for the containment suits hung next to the door to the clean room, which is set on shock absorbers and otherwise has no direct contact with the rest of the building to prevent microscopic vibrations caused by everyday office tasks from damaging the delicate equipment inside. Another door leads to a small digitizing bay where we go to train and to bring our children into the network. Large television displays are already configured for communications and displaying status of the servers once they come in and are ready for use.

" _Cyar'ike,_ you did great. We built all this in… what? Three hours?"

 _You are the one with the time logs,_ Ruu points out, _You tell us._

"The point is, We're so proud of both of you. We couldn't have done it without you." Oyan tilts himself to one side, emulating raising an eyebrow. We laugh, "Okay, you win. We could have, but it would have taken a couple of days. So next order of business?"

"Food," both Ruu and Oyan say in unison. We laugh again and pat both of them on the heads before heading to the door outside.


	26. 2017-5 (1999-27)

**Sorry it's taking me so long to do... anything. Unfortunately due to lack of planning (or rather lack of making myself follow my own plans) i'm not expecting to upload anything more anytime soon. Not that this is anything new. I'm uploading two eosodes today, and you'll understand why when you've read them**

 **2017-5 (1999-27) Annetta Murphy Arrives.**

As soon as we return to meatspace we can sense trouble. The others can tell it too, Oyan's mandibles raise into striking position and Ruu's tails stick straight up.

 _What do you sense?_ we ask telepathically.

 _I'm only seeing the usual life energies, but The Boss is more… well, he's just different,_ Oyan answers.

 _Someone's been here._ Ruu states. _I'm not sure who or what, but something's very wrong._

"Oh, just the one I was looking for!" the Boss bounds into Mission Control, "I've noticed that the network's been running a little slow and needs a bit of a tweaking."

This is bad. You never want to hear the word tweaking from someone who has trouble changing the channel on a television. Of course the Boss isn't done talking, so we tune back in.

"I just got back from a trade show and I met this very interesting woman. She's an independent consultant named Anetta Murphy, and she said that if she couldn't think of ways for us to save money we wouldn't have to pay her. I told her we were future-proofing our network by using a new technology called CAT-3 and her eyes lit up. She even said there wasn't much she could teach me!"

And it gets worse. How does the Boss even _know_ the term CAT-3, let alone think wi'd allow a technology older than our sister into the place?

"Okay, bring her in, what could go wrong?" We say. The Boss happily wanders off before Oyan gives us a scandalized look.

 _You're really going to just let her come in and rip off our company?_

"No, let's get planning."

So, it's been a few days. Annetta's been wandering around the office, blissfully unaware of our presence. Officially we're on holiday, but in fact we're hiding out in a backwater router until she does something worthy of intervention. It's actually been quite amusing to watch her blunder around, and she's actually pretty good for one of the independent consultants of her type.

"Normally," we explain to Oyan and Ruu, "She'd just do remote probes of the LAN and combine that with information from the Boss to fabricate some sort of vulnerability. Then she'd recommend outsourcing all IT operations to some crap startup that couldn't ping localhost and get a response before going belly-up and sliming the job for herself. But this one's clever, she may tweak some config files and make a vulnerability to prove how 'insecure' the network is."

"Uh… Mom?" Oyan asks from his station reviewing a camera feed, "I think we may have a problem."

"What've you got?" We ask, racing over.

"I think she just found your digitizer," Oyan says as we watch Annetta walk into the digitizer alcove behind the fake wall.

"In that case, the guards will finish her off and she'll re dumped back into meatspace. Whoop-de-do, Now, who's up for another round of Unreal?"

Several minutes later, we're proven very wrong in a way we couldn't have expected. Behind us, we hear a crazed voice announce "Hello Composite, I have orders to bring your core dump back home to fCon."

 **Sorry this is a short one, but trust me, I want to put the next one in a separate chapter. Oh, and apparently the official spelling of fCon changed a couple weeks ago. July 30, 2017 to be precise.**


	27. 2017-6

**2017-6: Annetta's Nature**

"Hello Composite, I have orders to bring your core dump back home to fCon." We whirl around to see a program that looks a bit like us. The main difference is that her coloration is completely different. Almost all of it is reversed. Her main body is a blue-green color. Her helmet is pure white and her quill highlights are a bright green, unlike our red-violet. Her Mobian fur appears to be yellow with green highlights on her muzzle and presumably tail tip, but we can't see from here, and her tail is most likely armored anyway. The only exception to the color reversing is her circuits, which are fCon purple. Even the blade handles poking above her shoulders are a different shade of brown leather.

We snort, "Very funny sis, we're not in the mood until this consultant leaves." This wouldn't be the first time Risa has altered her appearance and dropped by for an impromptu spar.

"Yes, sister dear!" The program cackles insanely, drawing her blades, "How about you deal with that consultant right now?" her voice changes, becoming much more threatening, but still just as insane, "If you can, that is." She lunged forward and swing her blades in an arc aimed to decapitate us.

"What do you mean?" We ask, drawing our own blades and easily parrying the blows, "Risa, we _really_ don't have time for this."

"Oh, you think I''m _that_ weakling? Think again – Traitor!" Her blades flash green-white with telekinetic energy, both surprising us and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that she isn't Risa.

"So, you're not our sister. Who are you then?" We snarl, counterattacking with a flurry of rapid blows with our own telekinetically enhanced katana.

"I said I was not _her,_ I never said I wasn't your sister, rogue program. I am Annetta Murphy, and my orders are to bring your core dump back to Lightfoot! So, my dearest sister, are you going to die quietly, or do I have to chop you into itty-bitty peaces?" She cackles insanely, "Oh, I hope it's the second, I _so_ hate a boring fight!"

"You don't hurt my mother!" Oyan flies in, causing Annetta to stumble.

"Oh, so Composite, I see you've found a friend?" She glances over to where Ruusaan is stationed, "And who's that I see? More of them? Well, I'll just have to delete them once I'm done with you!" She releases a blast of energy, sending Oyan flying into a nearby transistor. He starts to fly forward, wobbles, and collapses to the ground, unconscious.

"Oh, you'll pay for what you did to my Oy'ika!" We snarl, slamming our right blade into its sheathe and summoning our shotgun, "Eat this!"

The double-barreled 12 gage blast rocks her back, but she quickly recovers and counters by attempting to cut our weapon at the barrel. We push it forward and angle it so that the blade glances off of the stock and narrowly misses our elbow. We take the opportunity to slice one of her blades off at the hilt and slam the flat of our own sword onto her head. She collapses onto her knees, stunned, and we lower our blade to her newly-rezed green visor. "Surrender or die. Choose now."

"I choose…" her blade regrows I a flash of light and she tries to bring it between our legs, "YOU die!"

"Not an option," we growl, backflipping out of her path. She fires a pulse of energy that sends us tumbling out of control and leaps forward, replacing her left blade with her Disk. She hurls it upward, and we get ours in line just in time to block the dive bomb. Our Disks engage in a midair dance, whirling in intricate movements as we battle below.

 _Ruus'ika, go get help! Call Risa and Camanion!_ We order the Espeon. She leaps up and darts out of the router, heading for the digitizing bay. We lock blades with our enemy, blue eyes locked with orange. We hiss out a command and red swirls of energy spring from our arms, twirling around our blades, and sinking into her armor, attempting to access her archives. What we find stuns us, causing us to stumble back in surprise.

 _She's right!_ We think, _Everything she said is true!_ We know, because that command would only work on another hybrid like us.

We scan through the data before it has a chance to evaporate… Her activation in a lab not too different from the one we were activated in… Lightfoot's introduction speech… Her immediate and unconditional acceptance… His installation of the back door and activation of her anti-tampering protocols… And her briefing…

"Annetta, we have a mission for you." We watch through the eyes of our enemy as Lightfoot paces around a laboratory.

"Yes Doctor, please make it something interesting this time! Don't make me retrieve more algorithms, they're too easy!" We internally shudder at what comes out of a mouth that seems to be ours for the moment.

"No, something different. About a year and a half ago, we activated another subject, one nearly identical to you. The subject, identified as Composite, escaped our custody and disappeared. Your orders are simple. Track it down, and bring it back, dead or alive."

The memory fades into the orange gaze of our sister. Her eyes gleam with an insane light as she disengages and renews her assault.

"So, what do you think will happen to you when they get us back?" We ask, violently attacking and counterattacking.

"Oh, that's easy!" Annetta sneers, "We'll rule the internet as sisters in the glorious name of fCon! Or at least that's what they tell me. What I think? They'll destroy me and put you in my place. That's why I can't let you live! That's why I HATE YOU!" Her features contort into a mask of pure fury and she begins to glow with an aura of purple flame. She releases the energy in a shockwave of power accompanied by a bloodchilling scream that sends us stumbling backward. When we look up, her armor has changed noticeably. Her circuits shine bright enough to be eye-hurting to a wetware and her armor has gone from being smooth and seamless to being much more sharp and angular. Her quills have lengthened significantly, now raising probably twice as far over her head and appearing sharp enough to act as weapons if she were to headbutt someone.

"What… What are you?" We gasp, sensing her power.

"Nothing you couldn't become!" Annetta howls, somehow even more unhinged than before, "My full potential, unlocked in an instant! No wonder Lightfoot wouldn't let me use it back home, he was afraid of what I'd do to his precious laboratories! Now it's time for you to come with me!" She lunges forward, blades moving almost too fast for even our augmented vision to track. Purple flames lick off of her shoulders and quills and leave trails behind her blades as her style looses all finesse and becomes a simple rain of hammer blows meant to batter down our defenses. We spin our swords in a complex pattern, barely parrying each blow far enough off course to not hit us, constantly backing up, loosing ground to our attacker. We don't need a sixth sense to know we're dangerously close to a wall, but we don't really have much choice.

Soon enough, we end up with our back to the wall and nowhere to go. Still evading the rain of attacks, we analyze options and find that there really isn't a good one. Judging the time to be optimal, we leap out of the way, attempting to reverse our positions.

Pain like we've never felt before explodes through our left arm before most of it completely looses feeling. Our graceful dive turns into an uncontrolled tumble as we attempt to assess the damage. We attempt to scramble to our feet but our left hand refuses to obey us. Looking at it we quickly realize why. Our left wrist is a mass of swirling red energy attempting to reform itself into the proper shape.

We nearly collapse, but succeed in getting to our knees. A shadow falls over us, and we look up to see the purple-shrouded form of Annetta standing above us, blade held high. "For fCon!" She cries, and we wait for the blow to fall. Instead, the purple energy explodes away from her form and her armor returns to its normal appearance as she collapses to the ground beside us.

"Maybe we will return to fCon at some point," we grunt, struggling to our feet, "And when we do, mark our words, their headquarters will become a glass crater."

"All that power…" Annetta gasps, terrified, almost sane sounding, "All that power and I still couldn't defeat you?"

"No. We are not sure why, but we suspect that it drained your energy too quickly. You couldn't sustain the draw." We walk over to where the remains of our hand lie and pick it up, reattaching it with a glow of red light.

Annetta's eyes begin to glow with that insane gleam again, "You'll have to kill me, You know I will return as many times as I have to."

"Yes. We are sorry to do this." We bring our blades down, neatly slicing her into two peaces and watching sadly as she glows orange and deresolves, leaving nothing but an orange glowing core dump. We solemly hold out our hand and touch the sphere, storing all that remains of Annetta. We hang our head for a moment, murmuring in Mandalorian, _"Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayii, gar darasuum,_ Annetta. Goodbye… sister. We hold out hope that someday… maybe someday we'll meet again… Maybe next time you won't be irredeemable…"

 _I hope that is the case,_ Ruu murmurs telepathically, pressing herself comfortingly against our leg.

"Hey _Buir!_ " Oyan flies up, having recently awoken, "I know something that'll cheer you up! While we were hiding, I learned Banshee Wail!" He begins to sing loudly and badly, though nowhere nearly as badly as our own version. "DREam oF ANythING… I'll mAKE It aLL COMe TRUe… EVERything yOU NEED… IS All I havE FOR You…"

We snort, amused in spite of ourselves, "You know we don't like that song under the best of circumstances."

"DON't you wORRY About thE DARK… I will LIGHt up tHE NiGHT wITH THE LOVe in m heART… I Will bURN LIKe the sun… I WILl keeP YOU SafE AND WARm…"

"Oy'ika, we're going to ground you until you hit Zeta."

 **Important Mando'a term**  
 **Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum: Mandalorian funeral speech. Repeated daily followed by the names of everyone one wants to honor. Translates as "** **I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal."**


End file.
